


Red Huntress

by Elane_in_the_Shadows



Category: Red Queen Series - Victoria Aveyard
Genre: F/F, Prequel, Sapphic, WLW Romance, bi character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-05-13 16:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19254934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elane_in_the_Shadows/pseuds/Elane_in_the_Shadows
Summary: Growing up as the daughter of hunters in the vast farmlands of the northern Lakelands, Diana Farley has always known how to wield a knife - and how bleak the prospects for Red peasants like her are. Compliance to Silvers is the only way to survive, but when Silvers once more leave her village in misery, Diana knows she can no longer go on living this way ...





	1. Chapter 1

**Diana Farley had** always known how to wield a knife.

It was nothing unusual for her, the daughter of hunters and butchers; it was what she was expected to learn. Her mother’s hands had taught her, hands pink, callused and sun-tanned, with nails forever stained red-brown by her trades.

 _Stains from_ _the wrong kind of blood_ , Diana noticed as she held her mother’s hand. Both of them were standing on the edge of a large expanse of brown fields, in lines and rows with the rest of their village, assembled to await the arrival of the Silvers.

Her other hand didn’t clench a knife, but a sickle. It would be Diana’s first time to serve in the greeny corvee that took place in her village, Sieverling, every three years. 

* * *

In preparation of it, the peasants had left the fields before them, a full third of the whole lands belonging to Sieverling, lying fallow for months, for when a handful of Silvers storms, nymphs, and greenfingers came to their petty northern village. Several times, the Silvers were to water the soil, summon blazing sunlight, spread the high-yield custom seeds they brought and make the plants grow in mere hours. And then they’d tell the local Red serfs to reap the crops and perform the _other_ manual farm work, or whatever tasks the Silvers couldn’t be bothered with and claimed the Reds were better suited for anyway.

Diana squeezed her mother’s hand at the thought. She knew it looked childish when she was already eleven and not some infant, deemed old enough to do her share in the corvee. She didn’t care what it looked like, though she appreciated the concerned gaze Mama gave her, a reassurance when she was uncertain what to expect besides the obvious, ordinary drudgery.

No one seemed excited about the greeny corvee and everyone was tense, standing firmer than usual under the glaring midday sun. She admired how her mother kept her face straight while the June heat burned her skin even pinker but lit her braided hair to wheat-yellow. It was already eleven o’clock, late to start any kind of farm work. As Diana tamed her blond, shoulder-length curls in something between a ponytail and a bun, she heard some neighbours grumble at the waste of time, a waste she felt as well. She and the other children could be in school (if their two teachers weren’t among the waiting farm hands today), or doing a few of the endless tasks at home, or she could just, for once, if there was really nothing better to do than kicking her heels, play with her friends. For example with Giselle, the beautiful girl who’d been transferred with her family to Sieverling only a few months ago, a girl that fascinated Diana so much she neither knew to how talk to, nor how to avert her eyes from her.

Even now, she caught herself searching for Giselle among the few hundred people around, and the teeny glimpse of Giselle’s dark brown hair made her heart beat faster for a minute. Diana bit her lip to subdue her ill-fitting smile. But what should happen? There was no Silver lord here yet to scold his Red serfs for daring to feel amusement.

Not even _their_ Silver lord. Isère, the lord of Sieverling and several surrounding villages, who owned the lands and whom the Red serfs owed their tithe and service, rarely showed himself unless there was something for him to take. And he got no share in the greeny corvee either. However the greenies and their companions calculated their numbers, Diana didn’t know, but there was nothing for the local lords. The greeny corvee was a “service” from the High Houses of the Lakelands to the Red peasants, granted by the crown. And the High Houses and the crown had, decades ago, assessed some lists that claimed how much each village was to produce during the corvee. The greenies didn’t care that Diana was a child, like many others expected to work today, that villagers had been conscripted for the war, or how many inhabitants had died in or joined a settlement lately. There was a quota to meet and crops to be delivered to the Silver citadels. And the quota demanded that Diana replaced the labour of her father, who was far away in the south, to fight for the Lakelands in the war against Norta.

That was the true meaning of standing beside her mother, and why she grasped her hand again and again. The moment she fell in line, she was reminded of her father’s absence that was lasting for three years by now, its end – in whichever way – uncertain.

That was a silly notion, in a way. His absence was blatant every day, because it was every day that Mama had to work for two adults because of it. The lakelander army was scant with its pay; it only arrived once a year when Papa was on leave and visited. In the meantime, her mother had to do his work as a hunter besides her job in the butcher’s shop.

It was the same as everywhere: When the Silver lords of the manors demanded their meat, crop, goods and farm hands, the Red serfs had to comply or be sent to prison or to the crown fields; the large expanse of lands where High House Silvers had whichever plants or livestock they wished for grown with every technology available.

The greeny corvee was actually supposed to be supportive in that regard. It made for a few harsh days, but the crop brought in then could be used for the tithe to the manor lord or kept as food – although it was only a fraction of the yield the Reds were allowed to keep. Diana assumed it was hardly a third of it for the whole village, because the biggest share was delivered directly to the crown for “The Allocation of Silver Abilities for Red Welfare,” and the handful of greenies took a similarly large part for their “expenditures”, which Diana guessed meant efforts.

“Why is the greeny corvee only every three years?” she blurted out.

“Diana …” Mama frowned, because she knew that Diana knew why.

“Because of the soil,” said Tava, her uncle Timo’s husband standing to her right. He met her eyes, needing to lean down only a little as Diana had almost his height by now. Trying to be nice despite the day’s bad prospects, he patted her shoulder with his brown hand. She was glad for it.

“The greenies’ seeds are special, and take too much from the soil to be grown frequently in the same place,” Tava explained, his dark eyes showing a warm gleam. “Not without better fertilizers.”

“Better not to have those fertilizers,” objected Anam, the woodcutter and Tava’s cousin. “You hear nothing good of those or the plant protectants used in the crown fields.”

“From what little we get to hear from the crown fields,” Mama uttered. “Almost no one comes back from there. People toil for the food of the High Houses for years, and if they’re lucky enough to survive their time, they return sick or dying.”

“Clara …” Tava sighed, but the grim set of his jaw told Diana that he shared her mother’s opinion.

“Dad?” Tava’s tautness loosened as Kevin, the orphan he and his husband had adopted, tucked on his sleeve. At ten, Kevin was the only one of Diana’s cousins old enough for the corvee. The rest of the young children, her little sister Madeline among them, stayed at the farms and pastures to look after the few animals. Kevin went on, “all will be better when we win against Norta and take the farm machines they have.”

Clara blanched. “Norta may built machines, but I doubt there’re farming ones among them,” she claimed.

“You know that for sure, Clara?” a peasant woman who’d listened in asked. “Did your husband tell you so?”

Mama didn’t reply.

Diana had figured her mother preferred to remain quiet about Papa’s doings in the war. She thought it was for the ache of missing him they all felt. But more and more, she suspected Mama was decidedly secretive.

It was why Diana had become curious about Norta lately. She was as versed as anyone in Sieverling in the usual but rare news they received, or in their small school’s teachings. The fecund and bountiful Lakelands where no one had to go hungry, fighting the barren Norta whose soil was poisoned and dried out by her burner kings.

Easy to believe, wasn’t it? But people _did_ go hungry, starved, and died in the Lakelands all the time. Because Reds failed to take care of themselves, as the Silvers liked to argue? Or rather because Red peasants had to work the fields with their own hands although better equipment existed, as Kevin had said? Then there were the fields frozen in unending, icy winters. And the floods and droughts destroying crops no nymph kings or queens bothered to protect their people from. Silvers never did anything, not even when hard-working people were killed by small infections and common illnesses a skinhealer – or a simple, but overpriced medicine from the city – could heal in an instant.

If Diana was certain of one thing, it was that Reds _did_ work enough, tried hard enough. But what was that worth if the Silvers still stole the rewards of their work, and gave nothing but contempt in return? And her village was one that held together. If someone couldn’t afford the tithe, another with more would help them out even if that meant less for everyone else, so very few from Sieverling were ever sent to the crown fields, to work off their debts.

Mostly, these few were people already indebted, who had taken loans to buy goods, livestock, machines, fertilizers or seeds to grow more profitable crops. People who wanted more than bare survival. Who took risks with whatever way to improve their lives, and met failure and despair as a result.

Diana didn’t pity, or scoffed at them. She felt with them, because she believed she was also likely to end up banished to the crown fields, since she couldn’t help but yearn for more than this never-changing misery.

She had no idea if Norta was any better. Because nobody would, or could, tell her. She didn’t even have the means to leave Lord Isère’s county, was supposed to stay in the place she was born in like all serfs.

* * *

**It was afternoon** by now, with no sign of the Silvers arriving. People began to give up their stiff stances, and sat down on the ground, some producing canteens and slices of bread.

In the distance, Diana glimpsed a few kids carrying more baskets with provisions. She hoped her sister was among them, and when the next seconds gave her certainty, she brushed her mother’s arm. “Mama, look there’s Madeline – ”

But Clara Farley only shook her head with resigned smile. “What does it this matter? All we’ve done was for nothing. It’s a fraud, as the Silvers aren’t coming.

“They just don’t care about us.”

And, although Diana had thought the same thing, many times so, she felt something shattering in her to hear her mother confirm it. Yet a part of her was glad, because there was freedom in knowing that even if you served perfectly, you’d be left for dead.

 

* * *

_**A/N:** If you got until here, thank you very much! ;-) I expect the next chapter to be less info dumpy, so please stay tuned. One more chapter is certain to came, maybe two, and Clara will show more of her character there. _

_I’d like to point out the “fertilizers” and “plant protectants” mentioned in the story are references to Monsanto’s Glyphosat/Round-Up and other harmful pesticides. And the villagers have few animals since the costs of keeping massive numbers of livestocks aren’t affordable anymore, extreme meat production is out._


	2. Chapter 2

**Deep in thoughts** , Diana almost botched her handshake ritual with Madeline when her little sister arrived. Madeline smiled off her irritation, so Diana returned to her pondering, even as she chewed on her bread.

It was one of the rare truly hot and sunny days in the northern Lakelands, and it had rained the days before. So, were the Silver storms and nymphs even needed to prepare the soil for the corvee, or would the plants grow with the powers of the greenies just as well?

Finished with her meal, Diana glanced at her mother to mention her doubts. Maybe they were seeing this too negatively? But the words died on her tongue as she saw Mama occupied with chatting and giggling with Madeline.

Typical. Her mother – both her parents – freely shared their worries with Diana, the elder, while they continued to pamper Madeline. When Diana had been seven, as Madeline was now, she had already taken care of her baby sister, on her own, when their parents were at work.

So it was still, when Mama had a double workload for herself. Even last winter, after the evening Mama miscarried the baby they couldn’t afford. She’d left Diana and Madeline behind to go hunting again at the next dawn.

Although that night, all three of them had fallen asleep arm in arm, hugging each other and holding tight. Not only Mama and Madeline …

Diana sighed, taking a sip and using another splash to moist her face. She got up, looking for Giselle or another friend when her mother spoke.

“Diana, please help Madeline carry the baskets back to the village,” Mama told her.

Taking a breath, she prepared to argue. Madeline stood at their mother’s side, holding her hand, just like Diana had little time before. Jealousy added itself to this day’s general frustration.

But when Mama grabbed her shoulder, Diana could only nod. No wonder. Clara Farley was too formidable to be denied.

“Sure,” Diana agreed. 

* * *

**Madeline didn’t stop** talking on their way back to the village. It was one way to pass the long road home by listening to Madeline’s stories about their aunt Heather’s kids, who Madeline was closer to as they shared an age.

That still did little about Diana’s dim mood, though. Everything became clearer to her today. It had always been a burden how _distant_ everything was, yet she only realized its weight right now. The vastness of the fields, to provide for the village just the needed amount of crop, cost its habitants a lot, in labour, time and energy. It was like they were always working or walking somewhere, with no time for anything else that the lords – or the villagers themselves, probably – would call “unnecessary”.

Diana hated she didn’t have even the option to try it out, whatever, “it” could be.

“And?” Madeline inquired. “Any Silvers showed up already?”

Diana snorted.

“Oh please!” Madeline insisted. “I can’t believe you saw nothing. Was it the queen? Tell me it was the queen!”

Diana stopped dead. “The what?!”

“Queen Cenra, the nymph?”

Diana laughed, but Madeline wouldn’t let her curiosity die. “You know, I kinda imagined …”

“What?” Diana said sharply. Couldn’t she be spared this? “Why do you have to be like this? So … so …” But she didn’t know like what. There had to be a word, Diana was sure, but no one had bothered to tell her, and likely the new queen didn’t want her to learn it. The Cygnets had never shown themselves interested in the northern Red peasants, even less in their education.

“Why do you look forward to wave and bow to the queen?” Diana said instead. “Like a good serf?”

Madeline shrugged. “It’d be cool, if we can say we’ve met her in person …”

“So you can say what to her? Ask her that Papa comes back and never has to leave again?”

Madeline’s jaw fell down, then started to shiver, like she was about to cry. Immediately, Diana felt horrible. However her day went, she couldn’t shove her anger on her little sister. She dropped the basket she carried and stepped toward Madeline.

“I’m so sorry, Madeline, please, I just want him to return, too …”

Madeline wiped her tears and swallowed her sob, not showing her sadness like their mother wouldn’t.

Diana didn’t know if she should be proud or hurt that Madeline managed to do this. She could only wait nervously for her sister to accept her apology.

Finally, her sister took the last step into her arms. “Sure, Diana,” she whispered. Then, having pulled away and picking up Diana’s discarded basket, she said “I can take this now, we’re almost there.” She paused. “I’ll stay the night at the farm.” She smiled faintly.

Diana nodded, and hugged her sister once more. “Have fun,” she said softly, but wondering if the fissure she pointed out was too blatant to ignore any longer.

* * *

**Madeline dashed down** the way to the farm kept by their aunt and uncles, taken over from their grandparents. Turning around, Diana herself hesitated to rush back to the fields. It felt so pointless, but what should she do? She strolled through the village, on the only street that had been tarred ages ago and now was more cracks and bumps than anything else. Hardly any street or road was long-living in the Lakelands, because of the marshy, humid ground. She supposed the Silvers had methods to build better streets, on better lands.

Yet in Sieverling, nature crept back in every crevice, in every corner, whether you looked at the plants growing in the holes in the streets, or at the houses interspersed with smaller fields, pastures or the outskirts of the woods, with some long branches reaching over and shading the paths its people used. Diana’s own home was rather in the forest than the village, given it had been the hunters’ lodge for generations. Her father had no living relatives on his side, so Mama and Diana’s assistance was welcome. Only that Mama always had a long walk between the forest and her work at the butcher’s, especially when she was dragging her game there ….

“Heh?”

While Diana had sauntered, her mother almost ran to her, to her surprise. What was she doing here? But Mama reached her before she came to a conclusion. She took Diana by the arm and urged her into another direction, toward their house.

“Mama?”

Her mother only looked forward. “We’ve something better to do than kicking our heels,” she said.

* * *

**At home, Mama** merely told Diana to feed their dog, Lily, then took a sack and her old hunting rifle. Diana was puzzled – that wasn’t enough equipment for a hunt. But her mother didn’t reply, only smiled earnestly and bid Diana to come with her into the woods.

It was obvious hunting wasn’t the goal. It wasn’t the right time for that, but a lucky hit was always possible. Yet Mama walked too fast to find game, and with a certain determination that unsettled Diana.

Instead of prowling through the brushwood, they entered a well-kept path, soil but better to walk on than on the damaged villages paths. “This one leads to the manor,” Mama said after they’d covered two kilometres or so. “Lord Isère wants us, that is, Papa, me, Anam and the other woodcutters, to maintain it perfectly. So he can show up in leisure in his transport or carriage, should the desire strike him.”

“And having a pretty view while he’s at it?” Diana added, glancing at the flowers planted on the sides.

Her mother grinned. “Yeah, that too.” She sighed. “I used to go along here quite often before I married Papa.” She paused, and Diana wondered where this was going.

“Before I had a secure, full-time job, I mean,” Mama continued. “When I was a teenager, I did all these odd jobs. To earn a few scraps of coin for the family, besides what I did at the farm. I went to another farm, or a shop, whoever needed a hand to help.”

“Like at the butcher?” Diana asked, guessing that was how she got her current job.

The corners of Clara’s mouth twitched and she nodded. “Like at the manor,” she added.

Diana’s eyes widened. “For the lord? I thought …”

“He has his own, regular farm hands, yes. But every now and then, he wanted more.” She stopped and looked at Diana. “Come. We’ve arrived.”

The path led on between several paddocks at the edge of the forest straight to the manor. Diana couldn’t help glimpsing at it, at a compound so much larger and richer than what she was used to. The paddocks and the steeds grazing it already looked noble, but were nothing compared to the flower beds and gravel yard surrounding the brick buildings. They couldn’t be exclusively living quarters, although the riding halls or stables or stores all appeared lavish on their own. There was no other way to describe the compound but as _sprawling_.

Diana didn’t want to call it beautiful. She wouldn’t.

Fortunately, her mother stopped at a paddock, assessing the horses in it. Suddenly, she grinned and whistled. Diana couldn’t believe it. Her mother was positively beaming – and one of the horses galloped toward them.

Startled, Diana inched away, but her mother waved her back. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, “I know this one from back in the day.” She started to stroke the red-brown horse’s head. “This is my old friend Diamond.”

Carefully, Diana moved closer and dared to touch the huge animal. She trusted cows much more, but she was happy for her mother’s sake, who clearly enjoyed this.

“Good horse,” Diana whispered, and smiled weakly at her mother, who patted her shoulder.

“Wait here while I look around, okay?” Mama said. “It’s safest here.”

Diana wanted to ask why they even came here, and what her mother was doing where it had to be not so “safe”, but she didn’t get the chance. Having placed her rifle somewhat hidden in a patch of higher grass, her mother hurried toward the buildings.


	3. Chapter 3

**Left alone with** the equine beast, Diana expected it to bolt, if not to attack her. For now, it seemed peaceful enough as she stroked its head, didn’t it? Yet she readied herself – whether to grab the horse’s halter or to dodge, she wasn’t sure.

Instead, it were steps behind her that made Diana flinch. They came from the manor. Diana froze, unable to decide whether to duck in a poor attempt of hiding, or to stay unperturbed like she belonged in this place.

Her hesitation took the decision from her, yet she was relieved when no one called out to her. So she turned – carefully, in chime with the horse’s movements – to see who was passing.

To her surprise, she found a girl barely older than her, striding along the manor’s parkway. Her proud gait alone, with assistance from her rich attire, revealed the girl to be Silver. She would’ve looked strange without either, with her hair so light it was more white than yellow like Diana’s own; and skin so pale it had almost a translucent violet sheen.

Diana hadn’t met many Silvers in her life, but she knew how they were, what they expected Reds to think of them. And yet, in that moment Diana didn’t see how different from her this Silver girl was. She was like her, Diana, a sulking teenager, and so pretty Diana felt the same kind of shudder as when the sight of Giselle took her breath away.

The girl stopped in the middle of the yard, raised her arms and waved them. Out of nothing, a gust breezed over the yard and onto the paddock and after a minute, clouds arrived from nowhere to cover the burning sun.

“It’s so hot!” the Silver girl cried out, turning on her heel to another person leaving the manor. Another Silver, an older boy with short dark hair and ochre skin.

“Hey!” Diana stood straighter in shock, because this was called into her direction. The Silver girl was staring at her.

Her heartbeat accelerated, sweat beaded on her skin. She couldn’t say anything. Maybe it was better not to say anything.

“Stable girl, don’t stand around like that,” the Silver told her. The boy reached her companion and grinned over her shoulder. “Don’t you have something to do?” the girl went on. “Feed the horses.”

Diana was still unable to act, too stunned the Silvers didn’t even consider she wasn’t supposed to be here. And why should they? They believed Reds were neither clever nor bold enough to sneak in somewhere, or to truly oppose Silvers. Diana’s people were roustabouts invisible to Silvers unless their skills came in handy.

So the boy and the girl didn’t spare Diana another glance, not caring if she did feed the horses or not. Thus, she concluded, they had to be guests needing to boss around although they had no idea how this manor or its workers operated. That should’ve incensed her, but in her panic, she realized that also made them unlikely to report her to anyone. To be sure, she ducked to get out of sight.

The Silvers crossed the rest of the parkway, reaching some transports waiting at a gate that seemed more like decoration than protection, if it came to it. The Silver girl sighed. “Lord Isère was a nice host.”

“ ‘Nice’ as in the little sister of shitty?” The boy chuckled.

The girl shrugged. “He looked away as we take some days off before … what was its name? Aerzen?”

The boy thought for a moment before he shrugged. “Probably, but let the others go there. Isère told me about a cliff at the lake here I’d like to see …”

Diana stopped listening. Aerzen was another village in the area, though in another county. Diana believed it was the next stop of the corvee. Thus, the two Silvers had to be here for the greeny corvee? The girl had looked like she was controlling the weather, like Silver storms could.

That meant the Silvers of the corvee were here but they didn’t bother to do their work.

Diana swallowed, and only moved when a horse whinnied. Then she picked up her mother’s rifle and ran. There couldn’t be merely two Silvers, the rest would still be around, or planned to arrive at the fields after all – although the boy as good as denied that. Either way, she had to warn her mother.

She didn’t have to search long; actually, she almost stumbled into her mother next to the stable. “The corvee Silvers are here!” Diana hissed, and her mother shifted into a sprint in an instant, pulling Diana along. Ducking, her mother urged her away from the pathway to the fastest way into the forest, where they ducked and stayed close to the brushwood.

* * *

**Her mother continued** to avoid the pathway, leading them farther into the underwood, unafraid of twigs and thorns but seemingly sure of the direction. Diana wasn’t as well-orientated but had no trouble to follow. Firstly, the brushwood wasn’t as much of a hindrance as expected, like her mother knew the animal paths, or had created some herself. And secondly because Mama’s pace began to slow quite soon.

Her mother’s backpack was filled to bulging now, and she could guess its heaviness from the sight alone. Was that it? Mama was broad and strong, but even she couldn’t run fast with such a weight to carry. Not for long. Yet they didn’t stop, not before they passed several kilometres and were closer to home than the manor.

Finally, Mama stopped at a fallen tree, slowing to a walk before she sat down on the log. Diana took the place opposite her, on the ground. Assessing her mother’s exhaustion, she offered her a bottle of water.

“What is in that bag?” she asked as Mama drank and sighed deeply.

Her mother took a few more breaths, and another sip.

“And what about the greenies? They’re supposed to do their part! How can they get away with this?”

Her mother shook her head and returned the bottle to Diana. As she drank, Mama smiled pitifully and turned her face upward. The sky was still coloured a bright blue, although the sunlight barely reached down into the woods where they hunkered. “It wasn’t extreme like this before,” Mama said. “Sometimes the greenies and their companions left early, or the storms and nymphs didn’t appear. Or,” she looked back to her daughter, “they grew more crop than was asked for. Do you understand, Diana?”

Diana nodded, her mind racing. “They … did this before, and ... had to make up for cutting work in other places.” She felt her anger rise. The quota for the corvee was unfair to begin with, but to give nothing to some villages and have others work harder, just because of Silver whims?

“I don’t believe they can always make up for their breaks,” Mama said. “But what should happen – to them? Were they young Silvers again?”

Diana nodded.

“The corvee is always performed by some youths with nothing better to do,” Mama went on, “folks with parents who’ll easily pay fines or make generous gifts to placate the crown with compensations.” Another of those joyless smiles. “And in the end, they can still claim the Reds had been too lazy, can’t they?”

“No,” Diana muttered.

“Indeed,” Mama agreed, and cleared her throat. “So, as the crown can’t rely on moody teenagers, the seeds are sent beforehand.

“And I took all of the seeds I could carry.”

Pride surged through Diana. “Really?”

Mama frowned. “It hardly matters. 30 kilos are all I can manage, and these seeds are customized for greeny abilities. I just wanted …” She shrugged. “Pure luck if more than half of it will bear fruit.”

“Mama. We left a large part of our field lying fallow …”

“And most of Sieverling didn’t save seeds for these lands? True. There’re few options left now, nor will everyone have money to spare for new seeds which are expensive this late in the year.”

“So can’t we do more?” Diana exclaimed. “Tell some neighbours to go to the manor, too – ”

“To _steal_ , Diana. I’ve stolen these seeds, and if Isère notices, I am done for. How could I ask others? Whether they help me or not, they’d be guilty just for not reporting me.”

“But …” Diana didn’t understand. Mama’s words were clear, yet she felt a kind of challenge in them. “That can’t be all.”

“No?” Mama smiled sadly. “If this little will mean a couple more meals, someone or other in Sieverling might not die of starvation. Isn’t that enough?”

Diana didn’t reply because her mother was right. Every little thing counted, she knew. Just like Diana had to take care of her sister when she’d been a little child herself so her parents could work day or night. Like last winter, when Mama returned to hunting and the butcher just the day after she’d miscarried because they could neither afford the child nor a missed day of work. Not when she also had to make up for the day and money spent on purchasing the abortive drug.

“Simon offered I take over the shop,” Mama said without preamble.

Diana blinked. Simon was the young black master butcher who employed Diana’s mother. He was in bad health. His father had died last year, his mother much earlier. Conscripted for the war against Norta, she’d returned without her hands and died only weeks later of an infection in the stumps.

Diana swallowed. “Oh, I heard rumors about this. Congratulations, Mama.” She smiled for her sake.

Mama looked into the distance. “Simon will still own the shop and do the organizing and papers, but I’ll be in charge of the physical work, as the master butcher. Yet even this agreement, his father would’ve never accepted. He’d always hoped Simon’s health would improve, or that he married someone to share ownership with. When neither happened, he just ignored that Simon didn’t want to be the master butcher.” Diana nodded, although she didn’t grasp where this was going.

Her mother’s gaze on her was unwavering. “My family was so glad when I married Papa, you know. A spouse who’d take me in, and who had work for me, with him at first, and later at the butcher, after he’d used his connections. The other way round …” She bent forward and caressed Diana’s cheek. “We couldn’t have afforded a family. Not all three of us siblings. Not at the farm. Oh, there’s always need for another farm hand. But not enough crop to provide for all of them.

“Do you see, Diana? We’re lucky. You and Madeline, you can choose. Be a butcher, a hunter, or go to my family’s farm. You won’t have to worry if you have a job that feeds you.

“Isn’t that more?”

Diana almost choked. On her mother’s sadness, and also her own. She had to think of Giselle and her family who had lost their home after their village burned down in a fire. Their lord wouldn’t rebuilt or relocate them and so they’d had to search for another settlement to take them in. They’d been living in Sieverling only for a few months. They didn’t have their own lands here, and had to rely on other villagers to employ and pay them day after pay.

And yet. Diana felt awful for Giselle who wouldn’t let her fears and uncertainty show – because she had to, if she wanted to go on and enjoy the only life she had. What Mama said, that wasn’t more, not really. Rather more of the same, and Diana felt tears rising along with her ire. She swallowed a sob, though she couldn’t fool her mother. She cupped Diana’s face in her hands and Diana was certain that despite Mama’s arguments, they shared an opinion.

“What do you want, Diana?”

Diana closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “More,” she repeated quietly, knowing that wasn’t a real answer. Or was it? She was just a child, what did she know? The rest of the world was a mystery to her, as she was caged in endless fields she couldn’t escape. She wanted to scream as she suffocated under the illusion of a peaceful life. The Red serfs were supposed to feel at home, to be happy on ‘their’  farms and glad the Silver lords left them mostly alone.

But nothing of that was true, when at any time, the same lords could take everything from you, make you lose your home because it was never really yours to own. Not even your life was, when you were forced into conscription as the peace in the north was also a lie.

Her tears did fall and she did nothing to stop them, just waiting for the feeling of helplessness to pass. So did her mother who continued to caress her cheeks.

“When Papa comes back,” Mama said, “not this fall, but for good, next year, he can teach you.”

“What?” Diana whispered.

Mama’s small shrug couldn’t hide her smile. It looked genuine now, exuding hope – and pride?

“What you want,” Mama said. “To fight, for example.”

* * *

**As the sun** started to set, they arrived back at the fields. No Silver joined them until nightfall, when the last of the Reds left.

* * *

 

_**A/N:** This is the conclusion of the events of this day - the next chapter will be about Farley as a teenager._


	4. Chapter 4

**The next weeks** , Diana was left to ponder on her mother’s offer. She couldn’t make a choice on that day, nor had she been expected to. Mama wanted her to make a thoughtful decision, one to set the path for the rest of Diana’s life. That was a huge thing to realize, if not the mere option to have a future to decide on by herself.

Thus, Diana puzzled over this, during the increasing field work that reduced the children’s school time further. Everyone’s priorities had shifted to making up for the missed corvee and Armina Cordes, the greatest farmer of Sieverling, purchased seeds for the fallow fields of the village.

_What do you want?_ The question was never far when Diana toiled on their vegetable patch at home, when she glanced at her sister, or in the moments between chatting with Giselle. Diana was overjoyed conversations with the other girl became more frequent in the late summer when they worked side by side on the fields. Finally, she’d found the words to say to Giselle, and was still astounded she _could_ talk to her when her blood rushed to her head every time.

_Papa can teach you. What you want._

Even to fight. She asked her mother what that was supposed to mean, and her mother just shrugged.

“He’s become a soldier, so he knows about it,” Mama said. After a pause, seeing Diana still exasperated, she added, “he stayed safe through all this time. He kne – knows what’s waiting for him. We can be proud of him.”

That only confused Diana more, making her turn around to go outside. Later she chided herself for not looking closer at her mother that moment, deciphering her expression. Reds weren’t proud of their conscripted friends and family members. All they wished for was for them to return home whole and healthy. It certainly had been Diana’s sole wish for her father, but now her mother had implied this training, she deduced there was more to it.

She’d said it to her mother already: picking between farming, hunting and butchering was hardly a choice at all. And fighting? So she’d be better prepared when Lord Isère sent his recruiters? Was she supposed to volunteer then?

She almost dropped the can of milk she was carrying when the idea hit her: _Stop questioning your choice, and focus on the choices of your parents._

What did they want, truly? Obviously not simply to survive with their heads down. But …

That thought was poisonous, yet she couldn’t get rid of it. Had her father chosen to fight, by leaving his family behind and becoming a soldier? She stared at the milk she’d spilt. Like the milk wouldn’t return into the can, she couldn’t unthink this.

* * *

**From then on** , Diana frequently needled her mother about her father. Carefully. If her parents had lied to her face all this time, they could go on doing so if Diana was too direct. Instead, she asked about the war against Norta itself, her father’s rank and tasks, and the letters he sent home. Mama had read them to her and Madeline, but Diana wondered if Mama had left out certain details. She wanted to read the actual letters, and to her surprise, her mother complied without much persuasion. It must’ve been wrong to doubt her. Mama had approached the topic first, and seemed to want to put her trust in Diana. Hadn’t their conversation on the day of the corvee been about that?

The letters made Diana miss her father even more. While the work on the fields intensified with the harvest, it was also something else to occupy her mind with. But at night, when she was nervous and not tired enough to fall asleep the second she laid down, she sank into the words of her father. He spoke of dread and death, of his fears for those comrades down with him at the borderland and for those far away, at home. Worry of not coming back, and excitement to return home. Already, Diana started to count the days until his visit in the fall. She also figured out the parts her mother might’ve omitted before, the notes of love shared between her parents, the kind words after Mama had the abortion. Some strangely poetic remarks on red sunrises.

* * *

**When the foliage** of the trees turned redder than any sunrise, it was time the soldiers of Sieverling came to visit. To save on transports, all soldiers from one settlement were brought – or taken – on the same days. Although everyone was glad conscriptions and returns didn’t happen simultaneously. It would’ve only provoked strife, even Silvers understood that.

So, every family missing one – or more, in rare cases, several – member could look forward to their reunion. It wasn’t always an unblemished occasion. Sometimes, notices of deaths arrived too late, same with letters reporting on injuries. Every year, a sliver of doubt remained, that you’d wait for your loved ones in vain.

But not this time. The loud and old military transport halted on Sieverling’s cracked road and released its soldiers, Willis Farley among them. Not many villagers afforded to wait for them, although soon enough, families found their way to the soldiers or vice versa.

Madeline was the one to spot their father, on their way from their aunt and uncles’ farm. Madeline jumped into his arms before Diana could even say hello. It didn’t matter. He was big enough to hug both of them.

Some villagers resented their soldiers came to visit exactly after the harvest season, and thus couldn’t assist. Diana rather indulged in her father’s presence, without interruptions from the worst drudgeries. It wasn’t like there weren’t other deeds to perform, but even those felt like reprieve, if only because their family was whole again, no matter it was only two weeks before Papa would go back to war.

So Diana shoved aside her suspicions and questions, letting the moments of innocence and joy linger. At the same time, she felt childish for it, like fleeing from the problems that had haunted her for months. But wasn’t the whole village acting this way, putting aside the worry over the decrease in yield and the coming tithe? If everyone lived in delusion, so could she, she reminded herself.

The two weeks raced on too fast. Mama and Papa danced and kissed and hugged, Madeline played with him around the house. Diana watched, and was aware she couldn’t simply swallow and forget her thoughts. She felt her mother’s gaze on her and noticed her puzzlement that Diana hadn’t mentioned anything yet. Mama didn’t say anything either, probably assuming Diana had chosen differently.

That was what Diana concluded from her mother’s silence, though, and it made her grasp it wasn’t what she wanted.

* * *

**Three days before** he’d leave again, Papa took Diana hunting in the twilight before dawn. She was just able to keep herself awake because of the crisp air, but she took her place beside him, huddled in her wools and scouting with his binoculars. It wasn’t a moment for talking, but being this close to him and sharing the bloody task, gave her the resolve she needed.

The sun rose in what might be the last beautiful, sunny day of the year, and cast a warm red light in their house. Dust danced in the air as a crackling fire heated water for their tea. Diana and her father sat down at the kitchen table, both flushed from the outside and glad to be in the warmth, with the worst of the rabbits’ blood washed off their hands. It was her best, maybe last chance. Her mother had left for work while they’d been in the woods, and Madeline slept late. She knew it wouldn’t be long before her sister would wake up, or Papa got up to deliver their game to Mama at the butcher shop.

Diana drank her tea, letting its heat and flavour spread through her system. She looked at her father, who was taking in this moment of calm, of peace and home. That wasn’t hard to guess, and it proved no reason to hesitate.

“Why did you leave?” she asked.

He startled, looking like a man exposed. Could it be? She’d expected a quiet but chiding, “Diana ...”, yet he only stared at her, both shocked and relieved, as if glad to be found out.

She let him linger, and he cleared his throat. “I was conscripted,” he said, pulling back.

She met his eyes, unwavering in her gaze, but her fingers began to drum on the table. For some reason, that prompted him to go on. He lowered his head. “Or rather, I was picked. As I knew I would.” He sighed, looking up to her raised eyebrow. “What? The conscriptions here … are quite predictable.

“I was picked, and I did nothing.”

“You say that as if you had a choice.”

He shrugged. “As I said, the drafts are predictable. The recruiters will pick from the able-bodied, non-essential adults. There were rumours enough, and chief farmers having their say. I could’ve gone to them, likely Armina Cordes, asking to be spared.”

Diana didn’t dare to breathe or move. Her gaze fixed him.

“I did no such thing. Firstly, I wouldn’t want someone else sent in my place.”

The freeze left her and she sat up straight, incredulous.

“And secondly, I knew Clara would get along. She told me so.”

Diana jumped up, chair scraping. She had to turn away from him.

According to the noise, he stood up as well. She felt his hand on her shoulder and she spun, intending to push him away. His burning, pleading eyes stopped her. “That was what I thought then,” he whispered. “I … had to make it mean something.”

“What?”

“I met others there. They need me.”

She scoffed. “Who are ‘they’?” As if his family didn’t need him.

He pulled closer still, further lowering his voice. “The Scarlet Guard. The rebels.”

In equally few and quiet words, Papa described what he did in the army – in the shadow of the army. Stealing, sabotaging, even murdering Silvers, if there was a chance. They’d only wanted to save some Reds in danger at first, until the need for more increased and increased. Diana wanted to listen intently, but she had to watch and examine her father’s face just as much. He seemed reluctant, if not guilty. Yet he couldn’t hide his pride when reporting his heroic misdeeds. He craved to tell someone about this while he rued this feeling at the same time. He could have that. Diana’s curiosity had woken, and she needed to hear more. She was captivated and wouldn’t settle for less.

“You see, the Silvers taught us to fight. Their mistake not to imagine we’d decide to fight another enemy.”

Diana shrugged. “They think we’re helpless, so …”

Papa grinned. “No, Diana. If the Silvers believe we’re stupid, they’re the true idiots.”

She laughed and couldn’t stop until Papa hushed her. As if the Silvers had spies in here. Diana had been lit by that remark. Her parents loved her. They believed in her. But now she knew they also were certain that she, no, all Reds, were a match for the Silvers. It filled her with boundless confidence. She’d had enough off waiting for Silvers to be helpful. She would save herself.

As her chuckling died down, Papa shook his head. “I shouldn’t have told you. Not like this. And especially not that name.” His grab on her shoulder tightened in emphasis.

She guessed she should agree. She raised her eyebrows instead. “I’m sure you told Mama.”

Her father looked slightly sour.

“Well, since you did, you can introduce me to them too.”

He clicked his tongue and let go. “No, you’re a child and way too young.”

“Then next year? Mama said we can train together.” He raised a brow and Diana smirked. So Mama had informed him of their conversation about teaching her.

He sighed, although she noticed a spark in his eyes. She’d caused that. “We’ll talk again next year.”

* * *

**After he’d left** Sieverling, Papa’s visit began to feel like a dream. Life in the village was like before, only with a more demanding spin after the failed corvee. Having done what they could to make up for it, now was the time to save and ration the yield. Most of the crops grown from the additional seeds were going into the tithe due on new year’s day.

Numbers of the yield were tweaked, crops redistributed from bigger farms to those with more need, coins changed hands under unwritten contracts; all so everyone came as close to paying their due tithe as possible. Yet in the end, the people of Sieverling couldn’t prevent that two of them were sent to the crown fields for two years.

Diana watched them, a middle-aged couple she knew from seeing, being marched off by Lord Isère’s tax collectors with visible resignation – but no resistance. She wondered how they’d become those to fail paying. She didn’t dare to ask, and was ashamed for it.

* * *

**More and more,** everyday life overtook her thoughts, so Papa’s stories about the rebels of the Scarlet Guard only remained with her at night. Were they even real? Or did he tell her a fancy tale to give her hope? She started to doubt, but couldn’t forget the panic in her father’s face when he’d revealed his deeds. He said he shouldn’t have told her the name of the Scarlet Guard, and that wasn’t a lie. Why should he react so strongly about a fairy tale?

If the Scarlet Guard was a dream, she’d make it hers. While she feared for her father’s safety because of it, it also kept her warm in the harsh winter and the too cold, too arid spring when she lay in bed hungry. Even they had to ration their meat as Mama gave away some of her game. As usual, she looked away when other villagers poached in the woods, but this year she almost encouraged everyone capable. It was only fair. Yet at times, Diana was tempted to tell her neighbours about the rebels, to see how they’d react. But secrecy was expected from her and she followed suit.

Only Giselle distracted her from these thoughts. When Giselle smiled at her, the green and golden speckles in her brown eyes shining like gems, she fell into a different kind of dream, one that didn’t feel like the scornful heat of a fire in bitterest winter, but like the first caress of the springtime sun. Diana craved both. It was her father’s last year in the army, and she wanted things to change upon his return. First of all, to take up his offer of learning to fight. She was done limiting her wishes to fleeting dreams.

* * *

**Diana had grown** up in several ways in the last year, but her father only remarked on her height the day they saw each other again. Although she doubted they saw things in the same manner now.

To her, Mama’s and Madeline’s shock, one of Papa’s eyes had gone blind, and turned red all over because of the injury. He smiled at his family nonetheless. “It’s healed already,” he said quietly. “As good as it will.”

Of course, they were all relieved he survived and didn’t suffer anything worse. But no one could overlook his disability. He wouldn’t be as a good a hunter as before. And every day, they’d be reminded what the war had cost him.

Papa wouldn’t speak about how he’d been injured. Diana considered he was back to concealment about the Scarlet Guard, which disappointed her at first. She’d expected him, or both her parents, to approach the topic once again. Maybe her father _really_ did not like to talk about the war. Maybe it was a test, of her patience and trustworthiness. 

Diana waited until the new year, when the fields and trees were covered by thick layers of snow. It was an odd time for her parents to go hunting together, but nothing completely absurd. They often hunted together now, so Madeline already wondered if they didn’t “just want some time _alone_ after five years apart,” her voice dripping with innuendo. Diana rolled her eyes. Her sister was at _that_ age.

It really wasn’t the right weather for a romantic tryst, though, and by now, Diana was willing to walk in on one, if necessary. She followed her parents into the forest.

It didn’t turn into a particularly successful tracking attempt. Diana used the tricks her mother had taught her, yet eventually, it was her parents who caught Diana in a clearing mostly devoid of snow. After all, they were too experienced hunters not to notice her. Given the supressed amusement she read on their faces after their dog Lily had almost knocked Diana over, she suspected they’d even led her along for some time.

She must’ve looked sulky. Mama came to her and what Diana expected to become a hug remained two firm hands on her shoulders.

“Seems like you’ve made a decision, Diana,” said Mama in a grave voice. “Are you ready to learn how to fight?”

Diana nodded.


	5. Chapter 5

**Clara and Willis** Farley had trained together for weeks when Diana joined them. It wasn’t frequent or regular. On average, they sneaked away once a week, although some weeks passed without a session while other weeks offered occasions for several lessons. They tried to remain inconspicuous, regarding their other occupations, Clara's as master butcher and Willis's returning to hunting. Mostly, Diana’s father passed on the standard skills he’d learned as a Red soldier in the army – officially and unofficially. As it was, the Red soldiers had tricks of their own to stay alive, apart from what Silver officers taught them in the few months before they sent the Reds to the choke.

At first, it was these basics Diana learned from her father as they were easy enough for a 12-year-old to perform. At least they should’ve been, but despite her years filled by running, hunting and farm work, Diana struggled to unite these skills into a capacity for battle.

Unlike her mother who was a natural. Even taking Clara’s head start and Willis’s blind eye into account, it was obvious Mama was the best fighter among them. Sparring with her soon became a challenge to both Diana and her father.

Often, when Diana repeated the basic stances once again to engrave them into her body’s memory, her mother sat aside and scrolled through an old book, one looking unusually well-preserved and rich in making. Diana hadn’t noticed it at first, lost in her moves and Papa’s coaching. Then she assumed Mama had another secret hobby. Nothing would’ve surprised her at this point. When she finally asked about the book, Mama shrugged but grinned over her whole face.

“Papa brought it home,” she said. “It’s a manual for Silver training. How they learn to duel one another and such.”

Papa, similarly amused, shook his head. “I just grabbed it by accident. A Silver wanted several of her books disposed of and I picked up a few on a whim.”

Mama kissed his cheek. “The best booty you’ve got.”

Diana, intendedly ignoring their show of affection, went for the book. After a few glances, she looked at her parents in confusion. “I can’t read … can't understand it.”

Mama nodded. “It’s written in the language preferred by the noble Silvers. Papa and I had it in school for a while. Haven’t you?”

Diana tried to remember. “Now that you say it … it was years ago, only for a few months, I believe.”

Mama took her by the shoulder, suddenly serious. “You should refresh your knowledge. Many official documents and forms are written in this language, and you should be able to read them.”

Diana sighed, hearing the implied demand to pay attention to school in general. But as she started to delve into the book and figure out the language and fighting techniques both, she rejoiced at the notion that she learned the tongue of the Silvers through instructions to best them.

_"To defeat an eye despite their ability of precognition, bring them into a situation out of which they can't escape, for example, employ attacks from two sides ..."_

* * *

**Yet there was** no use to be made of her secret lessons, not for years. Diana hunted and butchered, went to school, worked at her mother’s family’s farm, did the occasional job in the village and trained with her parents to finally make a breakthrough in her lessons when she won against her mother three times in a row.

But when she asked about the Scarlet Guard again, voicing the forbidden name, her parents basically froze and couldn’t hush her fast enough.

_There is nothing to be done here_ , she heard when she was lucky, and more often, _you’re too young for this_. Which in turn made her wonder there was _something to be done;_ if not for her, then for her parents. Her mother happened to be away on her own for several days every now and then, something she hadn’t done before, and the same applied to her father. Nonetheless, their silence persisted and Diana went along with it. Save for the one time she requested to know how Madeline was involved – not at all, as she didn’t wish for fighting lessons – Diana stopped speaking about the Scarlet Guard or rebellion to begin with.

None of her friends were surprised by her bruises and sore muscles after an intense session, as both were nothing uncommon in farm work. Nobody questioned that Diana had little time or skipped one or two schooldays – there wasn’t much to learn in their little all-age school anyway. She could go through missed lessons later on, by herself, or have her parents teach her about them and anything else she needed to know. Apart from basic subjects like reading, writing and math, the children of Sieverling certainly learned nothing in school that would get them into better jobs, outside of the village.

* * *

**_Would the Scarlet_** _Guard get me out of here?_ Diana began to wonder. _Do they need me out of here?_ After all, it was almost four years after she’d first heard of them and three years of fighting training, and she’d never been introduced to them. She didn’t believe her parents lied to keep her away from the rebels, and yet …

“Ever thought of going away?” Diana asked Giselle who lay down next to her on a freshly-cut meadow. It was a noon after school on a hot day in the summer when they were fifteen. Giselle shaded her eyes with her arm while Diana looked right into the bright blue sky. In an almost leisurely moment like this, one dared to feel at home with joy instead of dread.

She knew the beauty of the place she called home was an illusion. But not Giselle's. Not the people she loved.

With warmth spreading through her, Diana regarded Giselle, whose skirts had slipped down her angled legs. Although their skin tones were quite the same in winter, Giselle’s had tanned to a deep bronze after only a few sunny days while Diana’s only ever became pinker.

Giselle sighed, still not answering. Hadn’t she heard? Diana turned onto her side and let her hand inch closer to Giselle’s, until their fingers just slightly touched. Giselle hooked her fingertips into hers.

Suddenly, she started to giggle. Diana frowned as Giselle contained herself and sat up, folding her legs. A straw had gotten stuck in her brown hair braided around her head. She cocked her head, eyes sparkling like the sunlight. She said, “are you still embarrassed over Ralf kissing you at spin the bottle that you need to leave home, Diana? I know he can be quite a nuisance, the way he’s pining after – ”

“No, I – ” … _I would’ve rather kissed you_ , she thought but swallowed it down, blushing intensely. Why though? Over the years, her crush on Giselle had never faded to friendship alone. And how long she’d needed to figure out her feelings _were_ a crush …

She didn’t let go of Giselle’s hand as she sat up. But her gaze stayed on the ground where her other hand nervously plucked at the glass. “I didn’t mean that,” she said lightly, shaking her head. “I meant moving into a town or city ...” Diana trailed off as the lazy softness vanished from Giselle’s face, replaced by something sharp and grim.

Diana blinked. Quickly, Giselle hid her dark expression with a faint smile that, for her standards, was as chiding as she’d get. Putting her weight on Diana’s shoulder, she propped herself up, letting their hands disentangle. “Come now,” she urged, “I want to be punctual on my first day.” And although Giselle turned toward the pathway leading to her new job on Armina Cordes’s farm, she wasn’t really in haste. She looked over her shoulder and waited for Diana to follow.

Diana rushed after her quite unelegantly in comparison and pulled the straw from Giselle’s hair when she caught up with her. Giselle’s eyes widened, full of amusement, as she beheld it, and then she snatched it away from Diana to play with it as they walked.

Diana thought herself attractive and was proud of her body shaped by her life, but she could feel a kind of plump next to Giselle. Although they were both leanly muscled and curvy, Diana was broad, chubby and tall where Giselle had something delicate and graceful about her. The curve of her neck, bared by the hem of her summer dress and the hair braided around her head, reminded Diana of a swan, the bird the royal family had named itself for. Indeed, sometimes Giselle left an impression on Diana as marvellous and terrific as a queen.

Still, Diana felt she had to ask. “I understand you don’t want to move into town.”.

Giselle didn’t look at her. She didn’t even look ahead anymore but down to her feet.

“I see,” Diana said.

“No, you don’t.”

“Eh?”

Giselle spun toward her and dropped the straw. For a second, her lip quivered. “Do you know how it is in the cities? Think it’s better there than here?”

Diana lifted her hands in defeat. “Sorry. I mean … I didn't intend to propose moving away ...”

Giselle’s frown was so harsh. “They don’t want us in the cities. You think there are better jobs? But not enough, and not for _us_.”

She had never seen Giselle speak so negatively, so … hopeless and angry. It frightened her – almost. She moved to touch Giselle’s shoulder, but Giselle reached for her first.

“I’ve seen it,” Giselle said quietly. “And heard from others. The Silvers in the cities – and the Reds entrepreneurs – they want only skilled workers. And for everything else you need contacts. They only employ people they know.” She shrugged, with a helplessly weak smile. “You can try, of course. Apply day after day for some heavy task no one else wants to do, and maybe you’ll find one. But not every day. Maybe not even on most days, and then?

“You’ll fear for how to provide for your family. Tides, how to provide food and shelter for yourself.”

Diana forced herself to keep looking at Giselle, no matter how hard it was. This poverty and exploitation of Reds was, after all, what she wanted to fight against.

It was Giselle who glanced down first. “After my family left home,” she murmured, “… we lived in the city for a while, before we came here.

“We didn’t have somewhere to stay …” She shook her head and sniffed.

Although afraid that Giselle would push her away, Diana hugged her, and Giselle’s arms went around her waist. “You’re here now,” she whispered, breathing in Giselle’s smell and longing to protect her.

“I am,” Giselle replied.

After a few seconds, Giselle pulled away, wiping her eyes. “I was so glad to arrive here, to be welcome.” She smiled, and this was a genuine one. “Hard work I can have here too, but here I am safe. And happy.” Holding Diana's hand, she turned back to the path. “And who knows? It’s been only four years. That’s a very little in comparison. In a short time, we might become tenants of our own farm.”

Diana had to return her smile as she walked beside Giselle. But the moment had changed something in her, as if she’d lost her footing now that she knew Giselle’s dream.

* * *

**Since Giselle hadn’t** really cried, her face showed nothing of her distress when they arrived at Armina Cordes’s farm. Diana found it unsettling – not that Giselle was able to calm herself like this, but that she, Diana, had no idea how often Giselle had done this already and that she did not know what worried Giselle deep down.

But had she trusted in Giselle either? She swallowed. On the contrary, she was internalizing her parents’ rule of secrecy.

_That’s only in regard to the Scarlet Guard_ , she thought. _I have so many other things to share with Giselle._

Ms. Cordes already waited for them, her dark brown arms crossed, a red scarf covering her dreadlocks. Giselle rushed to her, about to apologize for any delays, but the farmer smiled, shaking hands with Giselle and welcoming her to her farm and greeting Diana in the same friendly manner.

With a few swift and precise orders, Giselle left for the farm house to meet Ms. Cordes’s daughter, waving goodbye to Diana. Diana waved back and was about to walk to the butcher shop to help her mother when she noticed Cordes’s gaze on her.

The farmer tilted her head. “Come with me to the barn, Diana,” she said. “I think I have a job for you.”

Diana frowned, but had no time inquire as Cordes stepped toward a barn already, so Diana had to leap after her.

* * *

**The barn was** huge, proving why Armina Cordes was Sieverling’s greatest farmer. Sacks amassing tons of grain were stored in one large shelf reaching up the high ceiling; farm vehicles crowded on the other side. Both spoke of Ms. Cordes history of success. She’d invested in specific seeds and the crops to be grown from them; crops she could sell to other places for a good price, and from her profit she’d bought the farming machines to plant and harvest more efficiently again.

Seeing the results, it seemed like an easy, obvious path, although Diana knew it had been anything but. Unlike other ambitious farmers, Armina Cordes had been lucky to pick the plants that turned out to grow well on her fields, true, but it had taken decades of hard labour and setbacks to come this far and still, Lord Isère wanted his parts of her success in the form of a higher tithe.

Yet the farmer never recoiled when she talked to him or his servants, like she wasn’t afraid of anything, least of all her lord. She could afford that – she had power now, power she used for the best of her village. Apart from giving away some of her yield, villagers could ask to loan vehicles and machines from her, even for travels.

Ms. Cordes halted in front of exactly such a machine. Diana ceased staring around with an open mouth and decided to return to the topic at hand. “What about this job?” she asked.

The famer stepped closer to her and pointed to a vehicle. “Tomorrow, Marcus Wolff will take you to the next town, to the market. I’d like you to assist him there.” She thought for a moment. “You might not be home by the evening.”

Diana blinked. “It’s a school day tomorrow, and so is the day after …”

Cordes inclined her head. “Indeed. But I’ve heard – from your father – that you’d be interested still.”

“Oh,” Diana exclaimed, her head spinning with the implication. Could it be? Was Armina Cordes involved with the Scarlet Guard? It wouldn’t be surprising. Did she use a kind of code word? Should she, Diana, drop a code word? Or would she fail a test being too –

The farmer smirked, and Diana calmed herself, imitating what she believed was a soldier's demeanour. “That is accurate, ma'am. I’d like to do this job for you.”

Ms. Cordes patted her shoulder. “Very well. I look forward to working with you.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Diana was to** arrive at the Cordes farm before sunrise, when mere streaks of green, yellow and red were announcing the coming day. Accordingly, Diana felt the lingering cold of the night on her face and was soon glad to help pack the transport, as first the work and then the machine’s roaring motor were warming her up.

While Armina Cordes, looking fit and fresh despite her fifty years and the early hour, had greeted her friendlily and waved off Diana and the travelling merchant, Marcus Wolff, the latter was far less talkative.

He was a pale, almost colourless man in his late thirties, with light skin that neither bronzed nor burned in the sun, and hair like sandy mud. As a travelling merchant, Diana saw him often enough, but never got to know him; it was her father or Madeline who usually bought from or sold to him.

Mr. Wolff didn’t try to mend this impression and had asked Diana to stay in the storage area of his transport to check some lists. Obviously, that was only give her a reason to travel in the back and to occupy her there, as it was too dark to read and control at first, and once she could start, it turned out to be a quick and easy task leaving Diana to her thoughts.

When she’d assisted her mother at the butcher shop the day before, she’d told her about Ms. Cordes hiring her. Mama had revealed no reaction, concentrated on cutting meat. “You want to do that?” she’d only asked, hinting at the missed school day.

Diana had been reluctant to reply, about to inquire if her mother knew more about Armina Cordes and her possible connections to the Scarlet Guard. Then she’d shrugged and said, “I do.”

To be honest, by now she waited for her parents to let something slip. Yet today, she’d look for what Marcus Wolff had to slip.

* * *

**They arrived in** town, their county’s capital, in the early morning. After setting up their stall, “Marcus’s plums” at the market square, Wolff wanted her to assist him in a similar way to how she helped her mother – clean, listen to the customers’ orders, gather their goods, weigh and pack them – tasks that demanded attention and sure, fast hands. He only used her last name to call her, if he called her anything at all, and so she started to address in the same manner.

From Wolff’s glances, she figured she did as well as expected, but even then, he made no comments, offering neither praise nor chide – so be it. If she’d been wrong, and this job had nothing to do with the Guard, at least she’d get paid.

At first, Diana was puzzled that Wolff was similarly quiet with the customers as with her, until she figured out that some of them had to prefer it that way, given the hurry they all seemed to be in. Yet there were a few, barely a handful, who pulled a conversation out of Wolff; not a smile, but a slightly softening change to his features. If their words carried any notes of conspiracy, Diana didn’t manage to unravel them as these customers also enjoyed to keep her busy with elaborate, detailed orders.

The last of these had shown up when the market was already dying down in the afternoon. It was then that Wolff rattled off a set of directions and told Diana to deliver one crate to a depot and bring back several others. That would require several runs, too. When she frowned, he added, “there must be a wheelbarrow in the depot, you can use it.”

She sighed, and lifted the crate he wanted away. She didn’t have the wheelbarrow for his one, and would’ve to return it after her last run.

She found the depot easy enough, getting a slight feeling for the town’s layout. She tried to take notice of the other people going around there too, to remember them, though that proved difficult as none of them was interested in a break or small talk.

_Giselle had a point_ , Diana thought, _it’s not easy to get into contact here. The people are restrained here._

Wolff was packing up when she’d finished, about to get on his way before the sunset. “It’s early enough to travel,” he said.

She nodded. “You’ll stop at Sieverling to drop me off.” He raised his eyebrows. She took a breath. “I mean … it’s your transport. You’d go the fastest road to your next station without me … “

He shrugged. “No matter, I’ll like to see Armina again tonight.”

She didn’t know what to reply to this, which could be a very private notion or imply a report on rebel activities. Back in the transport, she fell in line with his silence.

* * *

**Several weeks later,** Wolff asked for Diana again. It was more of the same, besides they went to another town. Another month later, with autumn approaching and Wolff changing his range of products, she accompanied him for the third time.

The novelty was that after two hours at the market selling to a few regulars, Wolff started to pack up, announcing they’d make deliveries for the rest of the day.

“Sure,” Diana agreed, but there was a switch in his demeanour bespeaking this wasn’t a wholly routine activity.

Wolf hesitated to speak, to explain, for the first time ever. He was all about few words, but quick orders. Now he didn’t face her when he said, “when we arrive at the town hall, you go in and … steal five blank travel permits.” He turned to her, holding out a servant uniform. “Put this on then.”

Diana blinked, disbelieving. She’d almost given up the idea this job was a Scarlet Guard recruitment, but Wolff had made himself clear, not shying away from the term “steal”. Or was this just to be a favour to him?

“Why should I do that?” she asked.

Wolff didn’t flinch. “You want to see the dawn, don’t you?”

It was she who flinched at what would sound like a threat to anyone else. _Good cover._ “I do,” she replied with a smirk.

* * *

**Marcus Wolff was** truly a man of few words as he offered no other orders, instructions or advice. _A test then_ , Diana concluded. Wolff didn’t even nod at her when he stopped his transport and Diana stepped out in the servant uniform at the town hall at noon. She could only enter the building, pretending to be supposed to be there.

A cook or a cleaning person, she imagined. Briefly, she considered finding herself a broom to complement her attire, but soon refrained from that. She couldn’t even afford to look at the map of the building, let alone search every room and corner for equipment.

Or … could she? It was one excuse to open doors. She chewed on her lip. It wasn’t her task to find a broom but travel permits and to get out fast. She’d already lingered too long here in her opinion, doing nothing but walking down corridors reading door signs. She grew nervous as she could only hope to stumble upon a promising one.

Finally, she passed a room labelled _transfer office_ , which sounded fitting enough. Her heart beat faster as she knocked on the door and then entered, an excuse on her lips. An unnecessary one, fortunately. No one was inside. A lunch break? Good for her. She rounded the room, eyes on the shelves before she focused on the cluttered desk.

She touched as little as possible. But the form block with the travel permits wasn’t hard to find: it was almost on top. Her thumb was already on its edge, counting off five sheets.

She hesitated. The forms were _numbered_ , and probably for a reason. Sweat beaded down her back. Wasn’t the responsible official to see such an obvious theft?

She pulled her hand away, her blood pulsing loudly in her head. She _could_ take the sheets. But it might be just another test.

She had to figure out a different way.

Feeling her time running out, she examined the drawers of the desk and the shelves. Too late she realized she should’ve set herself a deadline. No matter now. _Three more drawers_ , she told herself, before she’d take the sheets.

There was no need. In the first drawer, she saw a whole other block of forms which she dropped into her apron pocket.

* * *

**Wolff’s expression** **was** stony when she handed him the forms. “I figured it’d be less obvious to pick a reserve block than one currently in use,” she explained, “given that the forms are numbered. This way, it might take a while until its loss is noticed – if at all.”

Wolff inclined his head.

“Unless you really wanted only five forms?” she added, but without letting her face display any doubt.

When he nodded finally, she still felt relieved. She breathed out. “However, I think it’d be a better course of action to go right for a storage room the next time. Or to the place where the forms are printed.” She lowered her head in a mock excuse. “I should’ve considered this first thing, but I hope the Guard appreciates the fast provision.”

Wolff actually grabbed her shoulder then, his face relaxing. “Keep up your mettle, Farley,” he said.

* * *

**In the next** three months, Diana did several jobs in towns as a cover for illegal activities. It wasn’t only with Wolff, or in the same places, but the gist remained the same: sneak in, play a part and steal something useful. Sometimes it was an office to get documents, other times Silver estates. At the latter, her companions always became more careful. She knew it was because Silver houses weren’t public places, with regular employees harder to hide among. But Silver estates were also the only spots to obtain things of value to finance the Guard, be they coins or jewellery to sell.

Despite her assignments, Diana still wasn’t Scarlet Guard proper, remaining an informal supporter. She was aware the Guard could just as well hire day labourers or Red gangs for this kind of work, but those people were only in for the money the Guard offered them – while a supporter like Diana merely expected a little coin for the legal part of her jobs, like selling goods at the market, occasional tasks basically unrelated to the Scarlet Guard.

* * *

**That changed the** day the soldier appeared.

Nothing special had taken place that morning, so Diana almost supposed she was really just to assist Wolff at the market, selling metal tools now that winter was coming. Nor did she pay much attention to the customer in the lakelander army uniform, not until she noticed how long the woman had stood already in front of the stall and that she actually made Wolff chuckle.

Diana lifted her head in surprise when she heard that strange sound. It stopped as quickly as it had started, yet there was still an unusual elatedness lingering on his face. Diana glimpsed at the soldier, a woman in her parents’ age, with straight black hair, folded eyelids and brown skin. Dian saw amusement similar to Wolff’s in her heart-shaped, ruddy face, but also a seriousness underneath. The soldier was smiling, but Diana felt it was only on the surface, like the soldier had a coldness not easily melted in her. Diana knew that kind of smile – it was the same her father wore.

“Good morning, ma’am,” Diana greeted the soldier. “How can I help you?”

The soldier titled her head, still friendly, yet obviously assessing her. “Good morning Ms. Farley,” she said. “I’ve heard of you.”

Diana frowned while the soldier considered her words. “I’ve been …” she began, then started anew. “How old are you?”

Diana raised an eyebrow. “Fifteen.”

The soldier nodded, thinking, and Diana looked her over in turn. She carried no visible weapons, besides that holster that might held a knife, and she was of average height, with a plumb but muscular built. She wore no name tag, an empty spot beneath the Lakelands’ swan sigil. She flicked her hand eventually, leaning forward. “I’d like to talk with you in private.”

“Where?” Diana glanced at Wolff who raised his eyebrows, which probably meant encouragement.

The soldier shrugged. “Just around the corner.” The corners of her mouth twitched.

Diana sighed, rolled her shoulders and cleaned her hands. “Sure, ma’am.”

* * *

**“I’ll spare us** the exchange of codewords and get to the point,” the soldier said as they entered an empty backyard, covered by a canvas. She stopped and turned to Diana. “After all, we behaved suspiciously enough.”

Diana crossed her arms. “I think so too,” she said, and saw the soldier was about to continue. Then Diana went on, “Yet I’d like some kind of introduction, ma’am. To the Scarlet Guard itself, that is, as I come to believe you’re one of its leaders.”

The soldier’s face gave nothing away, showing only the hardness Diana had noticed before. That rather made Diana more certain in her assessment. “Be careful what you say, Ms. Farley,” the soldier replied eventually, “you must know we are a quiet lot.”

_What will quietness achieve in the long run?_ “I don’t want to waste my chance now that I’ve met you,” said Diana.

The corners of the soldier’s mouth twitched. “You’re an impatient woman.”

Diana’s eyes widened at the last word. It was like a lure, an offer she’d waited for. Her parents told her she couldn’t join the Guard because she was a child, yet this Guard leader addressed her as an adult. Diana straightened. “I’m a woman who wants to get things done.”

The soldier chuckled quietly. Oddly, that didn’t irk Diana. Rather the opposite, she began to like the woman.

The soldier extended her hand and Diana shook it. “My designation is ‘Swan’, Ms. Farley”, the soldier told her, and Diana glanced at the missing name tag under the Lakelands insignia. _Smart codename_ , she thought. _She even looks a little like the queen._

“As we have this done, let me be plain,” Swan went on. “Now that I’ve seen you too, I don’t think you can continue with your current assignments.”

When Diana wanted to protest, she lifted a hand. “It is so, you’re a little too big and pretty to go unnoticed.”

Diana gaped, then caught herself. “Well, thanks?”

Swan waved her off. “No need to feel flattered. But I don’t want you to sneak in and steal any longer. I’d rather hide you in plain sight.”

* * *

**Swan wanted her** to pose as Tina Fields, a 19-year-old Red woman with an internship in an office in Trial. Diana would take Tina’s place and do her job for five months, passing on the information she found there.

_What about the real Tina?_ Diana didn’t ask. Maybe she didn’t even exist. Neither did she ask her parents about their opinions. What for? For show, Diana had avoided to agree to the assignment too eagerly, but agree she did. Swan expected her to, or she could forget ever joining the Scarlet Guard. If you wanted to change things, you had to make sacrifices for it.

But to her surprise, when Diana informed her parents she’d move to Trial in a few weeks and stay for five months, they were shocked. So shocked they didn’t even object with words other than, “Diana, no.”

That was her mother. Strange. If anything, she’d thought her father to be more opposing.

Diana cocked her head. “I know you need me here, but – “

“It’s not that,” Mama said firmly, but her lips quivered.

“Not that? Well, I will get some money for it … “

Her father stood up and moved to Diana’s side. His mouth opened, but no words came out. Instead, he squeezed her shoulders.

Diana touched his wrist, grasping something. “That’s really not ‘it’,” she said. “You’re afraid for me.” She was barely able to believe it. She pushed her father’s hand off, rose and stepped away from the table they’d gathered around. “You think it’s too dangerous to join the Scarlet Guard? For me? That I can’t take care of myself, of my mission?”

Her parents gasped but she went on, glaring. “You could’ve warned me at any point. Tides, you could’ve mentioned what the Guard does, so I could’ve decided for myself. But if you don’t believe in me, you should’ve never told me about the rebellion.”

Now her mother got up as well, incensed, about to rein in Diana. But Diana stormed off, up to her room, because she knew Mama would have a point. She always did.

While Diana felt ashamed for accusing her parents for worrying about her. Still, it was too late now. She’d go to Trial, and serve the Scarlet Guard.

* * *

**Her mother came** to her room later that night, in the dark where Madeline slept and they couldn’t see each other. “I can’t tell you not to do this,” she said, sitting down on Diana’s bed. “Not after everything I’ve done.”

Diana still did no know what her mother had done for the Guard. This was the first time she ever alluded to anything.

Mama sighed. “And yet, I do wish for nothing more than you to be safe, Diana. Is that strange?”

Diana didn’t know what to say to that, she only grasped her mother’s hand. Her mother leaned down. “It is just, are you ready to devote your whole life to them?” she whispered. “You can have a life here, _and_ be a one of them. You can have both.”

She paused, leaving Diana to think. “I only wanted to remind you of that. You’re fifteen now, more than old enough to pick a profession. When you come back,” her mother took a breath, “then I’d like you to choose if you want be the apprentice of either of us.

“Or to leave the village, if that is what you want.”

Mama waited a few more moments, then started to rise. “Back then, you asked me to choose too,” Diana said quietly.

“Yes,” Mama murmured, “I did. But in truth, you have to make choices every bloody day anew.”

* * *

**It wasn’t easy** to say farewell to Giselle, not after the many times Diana had already done jobs in the surrounding towns. They’d had … a moment, and then Diana did the opposite of what Giselle had asked her too. Now she could hardly believe it.

Maybe she felt betrayed. Maybe she’d felt so for months. All she said was wonder if Diana didn’t rue she missed school so often.

Diana did rue that. But that was one of the sacrifices she was willing to make.

“It’s really just another job, a chance I don’t want to waste,” Diana explained. “I’ll be back soon.”

Giselle grabbed her hands, her eyes piercing into Diana’s. “A chance? But why would you want an office job unless …” She didn’t finish.

Diana knew what she meant anyway. Why would a peasant girl need experience in an office, unless she intended to move to a city someday? She couldn’t tell her the truth, though. She caressed Giselle’s cheek. “I don’t want an office job. I want to help my home,” she said. “And my home is the people I love.”

Giselle hugged her then, sinking into Diana’s chest and the implication of her words that really said nothing. Diana couldn’t help kissing her brow as Giselle’s fingers circled her back. “I’ll come home again,” she repeated.

* * *

**Despite their protests** , Giselle and Diana’s parents accepted her mission. It was Madeline who stood in the door the December morning Diana was to set off.

“Hey,” Diana said, finishing her breakfast snack in the kitchen. She smiled at her sister. “You take care of the house? Of Mama and Papa?”

Madeline came nearer and Diana opened her arms. Yet Madeline stopped, not closing in for an embrace. She looked up to her sister. “It’s isn’t just a job,” she said.

Diana raised her eyebrows but stayed silent.

“Don’t think I notice nothing,” claimed Madeline. “You can’t keep secrets from your family. I just …” She glanced aside, only to return her gaze to Diana after a second. “Don’t forget, okay?”

“What?”

Madeline shrugged. “Home, I guess. Us”

Diana squeezed her sister’s shoulders, not inclining her head because Madeline hated that. “How could I? It’s, _you_ are the reason I want to fight.”

This time, Madeline stepped forward to hug her sister. She still reached only to Diana’s chest. “I couldn’t do that,” she muttered.

“You don’t have to,” Diana replied, caressing her sister’s head and gathering her resolve.


	7. Chapter 7

**The journey to** Trial took several days, more than a week. During this time, Diana was stuck in a number of vehicles, transports, farm machines and carriages where she often also had to sleep. She wasn’t to talk to the drivers, nor to be seen. She found that a bit silly but she guessed she was only useful as an informal supporter of the Scarlet Guard if she wasn’t known as one, not to be connected to any rebel who might get caught.

Her company was a woman about thirty, with short straight black hair and olive skin. Sometimes she drove their transport; the rest of the time she wanted Diana to prepare. Or rather “Tina”. To make her memorize her role, the operative never used Diana’s true name and neither introduced herself. Diana went along with that, eager to please, yet inwardly wondering how deep the operative had sunk into the game of changing identities. She instructed Diana in the duties of a Red civil servant, so strict and exact about the required meekness she could’ve been a maid servant herself. Or still was, like putting on a mask over her rebel self. As she also told Diana how to be a spy.

* * *

**“You have only** women as roommates on your floor,” the operative said when they eventually arrived at the dorm in Trial. The dorm was higher than any house Diana had ever been in before, and still it was surrounded by buildings even higher, reaching into the grey sky.

Diana swallowed her nausea that rose from sudden uncertainty. _Don’t be such a bumpkin._ To not let her rural origins show was precisely what the operative had reminded her about.

“Right”, Diana agreed to whatever she’d said.

The operative sighed as they entered the building and went up the stairs. “All inhabitants of this dorm are some sort of servant or other. Mostly with municipal jobs, like you.”

“Sure.”

The operative stopped her at the door of the third-floor-room “Tina” was to live in. She turned to Diana, glaring. “Don’t trust them.”

Diana raised an eyebrow. “As people? Or as sources?”

For the first time in days, the operative’s features softened, although one would hardly call it a smile. “I see you understand. As the former, of course. You aren’t here to make friends. Now come,” said she, and led Diana inside the room.

* * *

**They dressed in** uniforms of skirts and shirts, all in light blue shades apart from the scarlet neckties marking them as Reds, to undermine any chance at being mistaken.

Diana wasn’t sure what to think of the face she saw in the mirror. With her straight, pinned-up hair and the crisp uniform, it wasn’t the face she was used to, neither a strange woman of nineteen. She was not Diana Farley of Sieverling, but someone different, someone she’d have to get to know – and shape. Into the spy the Scarlet Guard wanted.

The operative nodded. “Let’s go introduce you at the office.”

Diana took a reassuring breath, glancing one last time at herself in the mirror. _You can do this._

But it was winter, and she was glad the operative let her keep her coat from home, to cuddle in something familiar during their walk.

* * *

**The work itself** was dull. Sorting papers, carrying forms, copying them. She wasn’t good or fast on the typewriter, unskilled compared to her co-workers, and she feared this lack of experience had to out her false identity. She tried to improve and to shift typing to other colleagues, but she realized that she failed the Guard in this regard: If she had been a quick typist, she could type documents for the Guard besides her official tasks. _But they knew this when they hired you for this job_.

On the other hand, when she was free of the typewriter, she had enough time to gather the bits and pieces the Guard wanted. The municipal office stored many police data Diana was to search up in the archives, at other times she could trip over some rumours regarding the forces’ next steps, both information valuable for protecting Scarlet Guard operatives. Not that she had any idea about their dangerous operations as information only ever flowed one way – away from her. Like before, Diana was to organize forms and permits the Guard needed, sometimes by stealing, other times by leaving a door open at the right time. Most intelligence she was to deliver to a drop box that changed location every week. Occasionally, a handler expected her for a briefing, and quickly, she learned to censor her words to avoid suspicion. Keeping her routes hidden was top priority, of course.

Diana had feared her absences, her inefficiency, would be noticed and chided, but soon she had realized her co-workers also stretched their tasks to fill their days, without trying to impress the Silvers for the small hope of promotion. Was there a point in trying? She guessed the real “Tina” would want to impress, to keep this position, about also that her co-workers would know better than her. The Silvers underestimated all Reds, and showed that to Reds every day.

That was why Diana had learned to freeze, automatically, lowering her eyes and putting on the vapid friendly smile, when a Silver entered the office. She saw more of them there than ever before in her life and the shock remained fresh for her. She was never able to anticipate their orders, either filled with stupid and offensive remarks, or random tasks the Reds had to figure out on their own, with little hints how much extra time they demanded. Those occasions were only sufferable because the colleagues stuck together, to distract or subtly calm an agitated Silver and to share the work.

The worst was that Diana was either invisible or a tool to be used or a doll to be stared at.

She hadn’t been aware how much it hurt, to be gawped at and not seen as a person but an object. There was one Silver, a middle-aged man with long brown hair and cold beige skin, who always looked at her in passing, harder than the others. He never said anything and every time, Diana felt her 15-year-old self like never before.

From her first day, she’d kept her knife on her person, firstly because she was used to it, later because it gave her reassurance.

* * *

**No one there** knew she was a young girl. No one knew her name. And she could never let anything slip. Not even in the dorm, where most of her roommates were in their mid- or late twenties, could she let go. She feared they’d smell her secrets as she claimed to be close in age yet always remained a little bit off. They even talked different from her.

She tried though. Gone out with them in their spare time, to roam the city. She couldn’t get used to it, the grey concrete everywhere, the air, the fragrances. There was a river, yes, and many canals and wells, but hardly green. And the convenience. She didn’t have enough coin to buy more than what she needed to live, but she saw enough – more than enough. Medicines, clothes, books, tools, even electronic devices were available in Trial, things she found at home only a few times a year when the right vendors bothered to visit Sieverling to sell their decidedly smaller offers.

Just the chance to buy these things at any time, to have them at hand when needed, made her envious, even though they were still unaffordable for most Reds.

“They’re traps, you know,” her handler, a young man in his mid-twenties with golden-brown complexion, said once. “The shops.”

“Hm?”

“They’re to tell us what we’re supposed to crave in the Silvers’ eyes, to ignore what we really need.”

Diana understood him, truly. But those were a city man’s words, not of a person who would’ve given – or paid – anything for an expensive medicine to save a life when purchasing that drug from another place took more time than a beloved, _dying_ , person had left.

Diana remembered when her mother had a fever after Madeline’s birth. Papa had been devastated, but he’d gotten that antibiotic to help her, as the drug vendor had travelled on just to the next village. His own mother, he said then, hadn’t been so lucky when she suffered and died from pneumonia.

* * *

**One rainy evening** in late March, Diana wasn’t with her roommates when they went out. She continued to keep herself apart from them, being a stranger as the city remained a stranger to her.

One reason for that was the curfew. She just couldn’t grasp it. Lord Isère took few measures to control the private lives of the people of Sieverling, but a curfew would’ve been beyond ridiculous. Telling peasants – or hunters, like her parents – not to leave their houses at night, when the best time for work could happen to be in the dark? When an animal – or a sick person, for that matter – might be in need?

Diana knew what the curfew was for, to control the Reds. To remind them the place they lived in wasn’t their own.

She stared out of the window, into the rain and onto the wet street. Her roommates had ways to deal with the curfew, knew the right bars and places to sleep in. It should’ve been enough; Diana was alone, could forget her façade for a night and imagine she was in another place, with someone else. But she was angry tonight, full of energy and considering how lazy she’d become with her office work and lack of training sessions. She cursed at hiding herself. It was fifteen minutes until curfew, and she decided to go out for a jog.

* * *

**She despised the** first metres but she bit through them, pulling up her hood against the rain. She wore dark clothes, pants and a sweater, clothes she also put on when training at home. She ran on until she no longer felt the cold gushes of the weather and instead had the warmth of the runner’s high rise in her. Finally, she smiled. And squinting her eyes, she saw the two watchmen almost too late.

Cussing silently, she dashed into the next alleyway to avoid a pointless questioning. She had little idea where it led, seeing only puddles and shadows in the tight gap between houses, until two people emerged from the darkness, pressed against the wall.

No, _one_ person pressed against the wall by the other. Diana stopped, yet a puddle splashed as she stepped into it.

“Another customer?” one of them hissed. It was the aggressor, the person holding the other, a boy, in place. A woman, it sounded like, and she turned her head to Diana, letting go of the boy.

The boy stayed fixed on the wall and Diana ceased to breathe.

The woman had to be another guard, a Silver. And, she realized as the rain formed into icicles, a shiver who was able to freeze liquid matter.

Dina only saw a pale face framed by hair turned dark from the rain as the Silver advanced at her. She prayed for her training to kick in, to tell her what to do. She fell into a defensive stance as the Silver slid on the puddles in the alley she’d turned into ice, along with the icicles in her hand she began to throw. Only then did Diana remember her lessons.

_You can’t defend against a Silver. You can only attack._

The Silver was inched away from her when Diana changed position and kicked at the Silver’s leg, shattering her balance. Passing her opponent, Diana slid onto the ice puddle herself, grabbing her knife as she spun at the edge of the ice.

The Silver seemed stunned, for she hesitated. Diana’s mind ran miles but she had no time to search her memories for a shiver’s fatal weakness. She just knew how much their surroundings favoured the Silver, with all the water to freeze and turn into weapons. There were already new icicles, growing sharply around the Silver.

Diana moved forward, afraid the shiver would use the puddle to pin her place, like she’d done with the boy behind her. She ran, her left hand lifted to protect her face against the icy projectiles that pierced her belly instead.

She couldn’t stop. She charged, crashing into the Silver and lashing away her arm with the claws of ice taking shape around it. They both fell, and Diana buried her knife in the Silver’s chest.

She breathed heavily, on top of the Silver woman. She pressed a hand over the Silver’s mouth and nose to stop her from screaming.

It felt endlessly. The woman was dying and still, her ability, her last breaths, tried to freeze Diana’s skin. But it was no use, and finally, it was over.

Diana thought she must’ve dealt a lucky hit, punctured a lung. If she’d pierced the stomach, it would’ve been her who lost her life.

Suddenly, she heard a crack and the boy stood right behind her, shoving her away. Diana crouched on her haunches, staring at the hesitating boy. Then he ripped a bag open and threw powder over the body. “Go!” he spat at Diana, and turned to dash down the dark alleyway, on some path only he knew.

Diana didn’t follow. She got up, stepped out of the alley, and ran home.

* * *

**_A/N:_ ** _This chapter finally delivers after you had to wait so long for the opening line of the first chapter to become relevant._


	8. Chapter 8

**Diana didn’t tell** the Scarlet Guard what she’d done. She only slowly grasped it herself, how reckless and stupid she’d been. It had taken her until she stood in her bathroom and got rid of her clothes to realize the dangers she’d ignored by returning to the dorm via the streets where she’d seen watchmen before, people who could’ve found the body and followed Diana home.

She spent a week in shock. It was like she was finally able to _become_ Tina Fields, because Tina would’ve never done what Diana had done. Tina could smile vapidly and hide Diana for good.

Did she want to be that person?

She couldn’t remember the face of the witness or of person she’d killed, like her mind had erased it although she must’ve stared at the dying woman for a minute. Left was only the monster advancing on her, a pale face and hair dark from the rain, threatening to kill her.

~~_Was that even true_ ~~

But Diana had defeated the monster and deep down, she was proud of it, of herself. The Red girl beating a Silver.

Did that make her a monster?

But to think of it like that was the only way to banish her nightmares.

* * *

**She looked for** reports that contained information on the dead Silver. _For the Guard_ , she told herself, when in truth, she just had to know.

The Silvers kept the death a quiet affair and searching a bit deeper, she found out why. It seemed the woman had been a watch officer ordered to follow and control Red gangs, and had been suspected of getting “too close” with them.

Was that what had happened? “ _Another customer”_ , the Silver had said. And the boy she’d assaulted, who had this powder … drugs? Had the Silver been involved in the selling, or been herself an addict? Or had the boy wanted her to look like one? Diana could only find and read so much.

Soon, the Guard asked her to research about planned raids on Red gangs, and Diana tried to link the points. No public announcements, but secret raids by Silver officers. From former inquiries, she knew the Scarlet Guard worked with Red gangs, in Trial at least, who the Guard wished to protect from the worst. Diana passed on the intelligence she got, although devoid of her personal knowledge. Still, she deluded herself into thinking at least she kept more people from harm.

* * *

**She only endured** the last weeks of the internship, not caring about the impression she gave, maintaining enough of an appearance to not draw further attention. She didn’t share breaks with her colleagues and sneaked into the archives whenever she could.

Besides passing on intelligence, she was similarly distant to her Guard contacts. Thus, she was only half surprised when after her final day at the office, someone already expected for her at the dorm, telling her to move out.

Diana needed a few seconds too much to recognize the same operative who’d brought her to Trial. Her hair was longer and a dark red now, and she wore makeup and an attire that changed her demeanour significantly as she sat on Diana’s bed. Her fine clothes were plain for a Silver, but elegant for a Red.

“No need for an advance notice?” said Diana to hide her mistake, recovering her bile.

The woman shrugged. “You aren’t here on vacation,” she said sharply and Diana flinched.

_Certainly didn’t feel like one_ , she thought, but was now sure it was definitely the same person.

The operative didn’t seem to notice, pointing at a bag she’d already started to pack. “Get those finished,” said she, rose from the bed and bent towards Diana’s ear. “You want to be home in time, don’t you, Farley?”

Diana gasped at hearing her name for the first time in months – and the implication. She set her eyes on the operative, squinting. “You know more than you let on,” she said.

The operative stayed quiet, merely urged Diana to hurry with a gesture.

Once Diana had taken of her “Tina” outfit and was done with packing after a few minutes – the Guard would have to make sure she left nothing incriminating despite her carefulness during her stay – she was led out of the dorm, into a backstreet where an old and simple transport stood.

Diana climbed into its back and the operative tossed a small but heavy bag at her.

“Your pay,” said the operative. “Or take it as a premature birthday present, although we don’t have reason to celebrate.” She made sure Diana was hidden, so when she left, Diana could only glimpse the last of her vanishing behind a corner.

The transport stood still for several hours before it got in motion. Diana swallowed down the nervousness the wait caused her. She counted her money, checked her knife was there but hidden well. She could be patient. She _had_ been patient these last months, and now, she would finally leave this bloody city behind to see her family again, to be home just in time for her sixteenth birthday.

* * *

**When a touch** on her arm woke her, her instincts set her on alert. Diana rose into a crouch, shifting away from the transport’s opening, her hand going to her knife.

“ _Shh_! Calm down,” the person in front of her hissed. Diana had to blink, from sleep and the morning twilight, before she recognized Armina Cordes.

Diana lifted her hands and fell out of her defensive stance as exhaustion reclaimed her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – ”

“I’d better hope so!” Cordes _tsk_ ed before she reached out with her hand. “Welcome back, Diana.”

Diana startled. She’d been on the road for days, this time without a companion and always hidden in some back compartment. She had no idea where she was now, and only a vague one about _when_ she was. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep this night, but against the cold, she had cuddled into an old wool blanket and against the hay the transport stored, and …

She shook her head and the corners of her mouth twitched as she decided she had to be close to Sieverling, if Ms. Cordes was here. She took the farmer’s hand in greeting. Cordes smiled for a second, then looked around, Diana’s gaze following hers. They were on a slope surrounded by fields and meadows with all the lush greenness of May, shaded in bluish hues by the pre-dawn light. She breathed in, knowing place she’d grown up in.

“Back right on time, I’d say,” Cordes pulled her back into the moment. The older woman found Diana’ eyes. “Congratulations.” She patted Diana’s arm.

Diana was really slow this morning, as she had to think again to realize what day it was. _May 13 th_. _Of course_. “Well, thanks,” she said, smiling for Cordes’s sake although something sank in her as she did so.

Was she able to do this, to simply return home and celebrate her birthday? Her eyes strayed to the knife sheathed to her thigh, still the same knife she’d used to –

“Get your things together,” Cordes said, “we have to walk a little.”

Diana obeyed, but she also noticed a sudden softness in the farmer’s tone. She shook her head, pointing towards the transport as she jumped out of it. “Is that yours?”

Cordes declined. “It’ll stay here for a while, like it belongs, and then it’ll leave like it never was. The driver’s gone back to his own village already after we’d met.” She smirked, tipping on Diana’s arm. “You haven’t noticed when it stopped?”

Diana blanched, stopping in her tracks. “Umm, no.” She bit her lip. It wasn’t just having fallen asleep. It was the whole last months, and the small but growing part of her that felt like crying.

That didn’t escape Armina Cordes. She grabbed Diana’s shoulders in reassurance. It helped, but not enough. Diana dropped her bags and hugged Armina who didn’t hesitate to hug her back.

Armina Cordes was a neighbor who’d become a comrade recently, not a confidant she was close to. She almost wished it were her father who had come to bring her home, on a little detour from his morning hunt, to comfort Diana and tell her everything was alright.

That was an illusion. Things couldn’t be undone, and Armina’s touch, after Diana had starved for months for a friend’s touch, was the kind of revive she needed right now. Unlike with her father, Diana couldn’t break down in Armina’s arms.

* * *

**Daylight had settled** in fully when they arrived at the Farley home. Almost, Diana didn’t expect to meet anyone – it was a time all of them could be at some kind of work or other. But Ms. Cordes smiled as she knocked on the door and was bid in by Diana’s mother.

Diana didn’t register the next moments completely. Her mother let out a squeak, very unusual for her, as she pulled her daughter close. Soon, Papa and Madeline where there as well, and all of them wished her a happy birthday, marvelling at the perfect timing.

This time, Diana started to cry for real when crushed against their chests, and stopped the moment they let go. She ended up with Madeline on her arm. Her sister had apparently had grown several inches in the meantime.

“Hey,” said Diana, smiling as she swallowed the last of her sobs, “looks like eating my rations as well served its purpose.”

Madeline batted against her arm, and they both fell into laughter. “Don’t worry,” said Madeline, “Papa and I made a cake in your honour, so you can catch up a little.”

Diana grinned. “And if I hadn’t returned today?”

Madeline winked. “I said, ‘in your honour,’ not ‘for you.’ You think we would’ve missed celebrating, just because you’re somewhere else?”

Diana rolled her eyes, then asked Armina Cordes to stay and eat some cake and breakfast with them.

* * *

**Food had been** sparse on the trip, so Diana was positively voracious at the meal. Eating made everything easier, also to communicate. Her family informed her readily of local news, if not to say gossip she’d missed. Diana was glad she had little to ask, little to say.

Only as the topics changed and Ms. Cordes took her leave, did Diana begin to feel a nervousness in her skin. It was joyful to talk about home, to be part of it again and ignore the last months. But she couldn’t forget them. As the laughter died down, a silence moved in, a curiosity in her family’s faces that turned toward her and itched to learn how Diana had fared.

Suddenly, the meal became too heavy in her stomach; the growing warmth of the morning sun made her back sweat and her head ache. She _could not_ speak about this. Not about how she’d become a killer.

She put down her fork, plastering that smile she’d trained on her face. Her parents nodded to something Madeline had said.

Diana regarded them. This was ridiculous, really. Her father was a killer, too, a soldier. He’d done what was necessary, to survive in the army and serve the Scarlet Guard. She had no right to make a fuss over the monstrous face in her nightmares.

She smiled wider, gripping her fork harder, and replied to Madeline’s small talk as carefree as her sister.

She felt a shudder on her arms as she noticed her mother’s gaze on her. And she _saw_. Her mother’s eyes were like deep, dark waters full of secrets and deeds Mama never mentioned.

Diana’s face fell. She still didn’t know what her mother did for the rebellion, but she guessed they shared this now. The loss of innocence.

Mama didn’t avert her eyes, her understanding helping Diana to keep her footing while the others talked like everything was back to normal.

But Diana was unable to pretend this any longer. Nothing was normal, and her family had to be aware of this as well. At the first chance, when Madeline announced she’d go to the farm to meet her cousins, Diana jumped up. She didn’t give Madeline time to invite her sister to accompany her.

“I’ll take a walk,” Diana exclaimed, and rushed outside.

* * *

**Diana ran. It** was uncomfortable after her meal but she didn’t care; she welcomed the pain and stitch. It locked her into her body, into this place that felt both familiar and strange. She drank in the air with its smells of earth and wood and she reached a moment of freedom and safety, mental states she’d lacked in Trial. She raced on, on a path through the forest that led to a meadow, and over it she continued on the edge between forest and fields.

_I’m running away,_ she realized and accelerated her pace, only to stumble and fall on her hands.

She stayed on the ground, almost wishing to sink into it and resurface as the girl she’d been before the mission, pure of crimes.

_What a foolish thought._ But she still didn’t get up and pressed her eyes shut.

_I’m a coward._

_I had to kill her to save my life._

She’d discussed this a dozen times in her head already and she knew there was no way to run away from the guilt. The kill.

And still she wished. Maybe she was really a coward, a child who believed her home was a beautiful paradise to protect her from the dangers she’d seen, even she’d started all this because of the dread waiting at here.

Yet she needed this moment of illusion. She fell asleep, and had no nightmares.

* * *

**She woke some** time later, when the shadows had left her spot and sunlight gleamed at her. She kept her eyes closed against it. _Not yet._ She lingered in the delicious space between waking and rising, gathering her strength. Just a little more, and she’d return to her family, to be part of the daily drudgery that kept them alive.

She wasn’t far from that point when someone sat down beside her. Diana knew her. She knew the hand that took and stroked hers softly.

Giselle was even more beautiful when Diana opened her eyes. She looked more mature, but also relaxed and sure as the sun behind her shone like a halo.

She didn’t speak but her presence alone both calmed Diana and made her heart beat faster.

Diana yawned which made Giselle smile, and as she took Giselle’s other hand, she turned from her side onto her back and pulled Giselle with her – over her.

Their hands clasped, she felt Giselle’s heavy breath on her face and a shiver on her skin. Giselle searched for her balance and found it with Diana’s hips between her knees.

“Happy birthday, Diana,” she said softly and it felt like a kiss. She grinned. “Now we’re finally the same age.”

Diana lifted her hand to cup Giselle’s cheek. The touch, after all this time, was electrifying. “I’m terribly sorry,” she muttered, “to have missed your birthday.” It had been on March 17th.

Giselle shook her head in mock reprimand and pulled Diana up as she sat on her haunches. “No matter now,” she said, tipping on Diana’s cheek, “but if you come home with me, I’ll have a present for you.”

“You do?” Diana didn’t know where to look, where to out her hands she longed to put everywhere. Giselle’s fingers freely tickled the skin above Diana’s hips. She smirked to hide her nervousness – and to keep herself from moaning.

_I am not running away._

“But I have nothing for you.” Indeed she cursed herself for that. She should’ve gotten something for everyone, despite the little allowance she’d had in Trial.

Giselle cocked her head and became even lovelier. “Don’t you?” It almost sounded like a challenge.

_I am not a coward._

“Let me think,” Diana said slowly and one of her hands splayed on Giselle’s waist as the other went over Giselle’s arms and shoulders to her hair and the back of her neck. She stared right into her eyes and yet it felt like it was Giselle’s that fixed hers. “Maybe I do,” she whispered. “Should I show you?”

_I am in love._

“Show me now,” Giselle demanded, grinning, her grip on Diana’s hips tightening, and Diana forgot why she’d ever hesitated. She’d yearned for this for so long. When she kissed Giselle with the hunger that had built up for months, no, years, she finally felt like she’d arrived at home.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Giselle offered her** to take a bath at her home. As eager as Diana was to agree, embarrassment rose in her like the colour to her cheeks. She’d neither bothered to change clothes since her arrival, nor about the impression she gave, travel-worn as she was.

Giselle chuckled as she read Diana’s awkward expression but showed no irritation herself. So, Diana took her up on it and never let go of Giselle during the walk to Giselle’s home, closing in and stepping aside again only to feel the pull of their linked hands.

* * *

**Giselle and her** family – her parents and a little brother – rented two attic rooms in a larger farm and were allowed to share bathroom and kitchen with the farmers.

“Usually, we share the hot water, going one after the other in the evening,” Giselle explained “It’ll only be a little earlier today.” She winked. “We have running water and an oven to heat it,” she went on, explaining the tabs and the luxury they offered. She took her time with that, lingering on instead of leaving Diana alone as water filled the tub.

Diana wasn’t sure if she wanted that. She craved for Giselle’s smile and hands and –

Then Giselle stood still in front of her. For the longest moment, they just looked at each other. When Giselle grasped her shoulder to urge Diana to sit down, Diana obeyed without thinking about anything else but the girl in front of her.

Giselle knelt down, lifting her eyes to Diana’s. She fumbled with the hems of Diana’s shirt. “We could wash your clothes, too,” she said, and Diana nodded.

There was nothing but Giselle’s green-brown eyes.

“Should I help you taking them off?” Giselle said, and Diana nodded again. She also whispered her agreement as her hands cupped Giselle’s concentrated face. She worked slowly, taking her time to open each button of Diana’s plaid shirt one after the other. Diana’s breathing slowed, quickened, and became a gasp when her shirt was finally unbuttoned and she felt a shiver going over her skin.

Diana pulled away to throw off the shirt and Giselle grinned up to her, just before she laid her hands on Diana’s waist, shoving up her chemise centimeter by centimeter.

Diana kissed her brow as Giselle rose to a crouch and snapped Diana’s bra open. Both the bra and the chemise were gone in one fluid motion and Diana stood, opening her belt and pushing off her trousers, to let Giselle look her over.

It was different from the many times they’d casually changed in front of each other. Intense. Intimate. Yet she felt no awkwardness, or rather just a tiny bit of it, which turned this into a strange kind of challenge she couldn’t withstand.

Giselle breathed audibly. She touched Diana’s neck, startling her. But Giselle only loosened Diana’s braid, letting the long yellow waves of her hair fall down.

As Giselle’s fingers played with Diana’s tresses, brushing the skin on her back and shoulders, they kissed again. “You’re so pretty,” Giselle whispered.

Diana took her face in her hands. “So are you,” she said, locking her eyes with Giselle’s.

Giselle blushed, casting her gaze down for a second. When she lifted her eyes, she smiled. “Yes,” she agreed, and opened the bodice of her dress. It fell down, the skirts forming a circle around her feet. “There’s place for two in the tub,” she said. “Can I join you?”

“Yes,” Diana breathed, and squeezed Giselle’s hands, wishing they’d never stop touching.

* * *

**Wrapped in towels** and hushing their giggles, they rushed up the stairs to Giselle’s room under the roof. She shared it with her little brother, but now, in the afternoon, no one was disturbing them in the whole house. They fell on Giselle’s narrow bed, Diana with her back to the slanted roof; Giselle facing her.

Diana made a record of the moment as it was – the place for them alone, filled with an orange shine from the sunlight beaming right through the window, Giselle mere centimeters away from her.

They’d splashed, cuddled, and kissed in the tub, yet every touch had felt new. She didn’t know what to make of this – where they girlfriends now? Or was this indeed only a birthday present, an experiment, never to be repeated?

Diana loosened her fingers clasped in Giselle’s, letting them glide over the other girl’s arm, to her neck. It was still as exciting, arousing, as before. She gulped, tucking a lock of Giselle’s hair behind her ear, back inside the towel around her head.

Diana prepared to speak, but then Giselle stirred, her lips brushing Diana’s cheek, and rose in a flash of motion.

She rubbed her body and hair dry a final time, then threw the towels over a chair. Diana swallowed, not knowing where to look. Were they back to casual undressing and changing among friends, although Diana sensed the same intimacy as before?

But then, Giselle was already in her underwear and producing more clothes from a cupboard. “I must have _something_ that’ll fit you,” she muttered, and pulled a shift dress over herself. She grinned, brighter than the sunlight, and passed two pieces of underwear to Diana. “These, maybe?”

Diana was glad for the distraction, sat and tried to exchange the towels for the underwear as unperturbed as Giselle. When she was done, she found Giselle hugging something to her chest, slightly reluctant to speak and thus belying her lightness from seconds before.

“What is it?” Diana cocked her head, beckoning Giselle. The latter blushed and slowly came closer, sitting down beside Diana.

“My present,” she said. Diana raised her eyebrows, and Giselle gave her a friendly pat. “What? I am not … hmm, ungrateful for your … kiss” – her eyelids fluttered – “but I did prepare something lasting as well.” With that, she lowered the piece of fabric she held and unfolded it.

It was a shift dress or night gown, similar to the one Giselle wore, with red and blue embroidery at the hems.

As Diana studied the gown, Giselle played with the ends of Diana’s damp hair and shrugged. “You need something to wear while your clothes dry,” she said casually, but the way she glanced and brushed over the embroidery made clear how proud she was of it, her own work.

Heat rose to Diana’s face and she bit her lips. “Thank you,” she said, taking the dress. Truth was, she neither liked dresses under which to wear a shift like this, nor night gowns. But she loved it as Giselle’s present, as she loved to imagine Giselle stitching the pattern of red and blue while thinking of her.

Leaning over her shoulder, Giselle whispered, “put it on,” and Diana obeyed.

Giselle was very satisfied with her sight apparently, given her smug expression. “You’ve talked about doing needlework before,” Diana remarked. “But … “

“But I haven’t had time to spend on it before,” Giselle replied. “Yes.” She looked down. “You see, there have been changes in my life, as in yours. I’ve left school.”

“Oh.” Diana blinked.

“Yes,” Giselle repeated. “That shouldn’t shock you though. You’ve done the same?”

And still it did. Diana couldn’t say why. Because she felt her path was worth leaving school for, unlike Giselle’s? When in truth, they’d always complained about school, too, about not learning anything new that wasn’t about farming, nothing to bring anyone out of this village.

Giselle flattened wrinkles her skirt. “However, I’m enjoying this so far. I’m past my dreadful first attempts, and I tailor clothes as well. For myself, and my family mostly, but I hope I can sell my embroidered stuff a little, through the travelling vendors.” Giselle fell silent, and Diana wondered if she thought about the clothes Diana had to have seen in Trial – clothes for Silvers, richer far beyond everything Giselle could make.

“Bet soon the whole county will know your style,” Diana said to counter such thoughts, and indeed, the corners of Giselle’s mouth twitched.

“We have our own style,” she said. _A Red style_.

Diana swallowed, for once noticing the same desire for respect in Giselle as in herself. “The patterns aren’t the same,” she observed instead, pointing between her and Giselle.

Giselle nodded, “I’ve experimented a little, but I was inspired by my great-grandmother’s clothes.” She outstretched her arm. “She came from across the sea when she was our age, and I’ve always loved those clothes and patterns only she wore, when I was little.”

“They’re great,” said Diana, but this new information woke her curiosity. “Do you remember more from her, about the other continents?” She tried not to sound too eager.

Giselle shook her head. “My father might,” she said, her gaze moving around before it returned to Diana. She took her hand. “But what do you have to tell?” she asked. “About Trial?”

This time, Diana felt a readiness to speak she’d lacked among her family in the morning. While she still thought about how to structure her experience into words, Giselle added, “seen any boy or girl you liked?”

Diana startled, about to deny out of reflex, but she was also tempted by the chance to tease Giselle. She cocked her head and grinned over her whole face, asking instead, “and what about you, have _you_ met any girl here?”

Giselle blinked, tried to smile, and failed. She squeezed Diana’s hand, interspersing their fingers. “I wondered if I would,” she murmured eventually. She lifted her eyes. “But there is no one but you.”

Diana wasn’t sure if she could handle that confession.

The light brought out new colours in her hair as Giselle shook her head. “I believed that we’re friends,” she continued. “That working side by side, a few hours here, some touch there – that that was enough. Like that was all we were.

“But then you were gone, and I felt like I missed a piece of myself.” The clasping of Diana’s hand became tighter as Giselle pulled their joined hands closer to her body.

_Was this how I felt?_ Diana wondered. But she could not say. In fact, she’d missed home in Trial so intensely, she was unable to determine how much had been due exclusively to Giselle.

Giselle paused. Like she waited for Diana to reply. But what could that answer be, when her heart raced and felt like it was tangled?

Giselle took a breath and fixed Diana with her eyes. She loosened her grasp to caress Diana’s cheek. “I’ve decided I wouldn’t waste time anymore,” she said softly.

Diana gulped. “Yes, She Diana agreed in a husky voice. “I don’t want that either.”

Giselle smiled, a little exhausted, but also happily, and very, very relieved.

“So we’re together,” Diana said, a doubt still lingering in her voice.

“We are,” Giselle stated, and kissed her.

* * *

**Diana required a** few days to settle in, but eventually, she made the decision her mother had asked of her: Diana chose her profession, and would be a hunter like her father, by starting as his apprentice.

Once she’d stated this, no one seemed surprised. Had it been that obvious, when Diana herself was uncertain if it was what she wanted? Yet it felt right enough, and not only a feral part of her wished to master the skills of a hunter, to track and endure in the wild, to wait for prey with the weight of a weapon in her hands.

She didn’t yearn to kill, but preparing for when it was necessary, approaching it in an almost controlled manner, helped her deal with the kill she’d already committed. The panic began to ease rather than flow and the nightmares pulled back as Diana spent more and more time in the forest, often only accompanied by Lily, their hunting dog, learning her trade.

And there was much to learn. Although she’d followed her parents on their hunts before, assisting wasn’t the same as mastering it. There were still their fighting training sessions and her father’s hunts at dusk and dawn she took part in every day now, but also whole days on the outside to learn, search, and observe. Her father had floods of knowledge to pass on, about seasons, tracking, animal behaviour, but he taught Diana bit by bit, and then left her to put it to use on her own.

She enjoyed this, being alone in the woods and instead of lonely in a room, but she couldn’t deny she favoured the times when Giselle stumbled onto her paths, in breaks between her jobs and other duties.

Diana began to imagine it as a game, as if she was tracked by the girl she loved instead of being a tracker, and instead of looking out for animals, she searched for hints betraying when Giselle was near.

* * *

**It was a** short summer, cold and wet, giving way to autumn way too soon. People worried about the harvest and the winter to come already. Giselle, continuing with her embroidery designs, began to wear an extraordinary headscarf against the cold, and finished several pieces of wool she sold in the village or gave to Diana.

“Why are you even here during daylight?” Giselle asked once. She had a little common knowledge about hunting.

Diana shrugged. “Blood beginner that I am, I need the light to search for animals.” She stopped, turning to Giselle at her side. “And what’s your excuse today?” She smirked. “Mushrooms?”

Giselle lifted her basket. “Herbs.” She returned the smirk. “Want any?”

Diana craved the offer almost as much as for Giselle’s touch. Her girlfriend was divine when it came to spices and herbs, and especially when she could combine them for the best teas.

Indeed, Diana needed Giselle’s teas to warm her during a day in the forest, although she wasn’t sure if it was the tea or the girl herself she desired. When there wasn’t hot water left in her canteen, nor a fire could be made, it was the stray kiss on the neck, the hand shoving down a stocking to touch warm, naked skin, that protected Diana against the cold and kept her going, while also leaving her longing for more.

* * *

**All too often** , Giselle left quickly, returning to her duties, and Diana with her dreams. After Diana’s birthday, they simply didn’t have enough time and space alone together.

They could though, if they’d tried harder. They’d told their families about getting together, but neither was ready to discuss spending the night together with them, even more so as neither of them had a room of her own. Maybe they were also too shy to proceed in a rush, so made each step on its own, savouring their love. Because there were also some hours in the morning or the afternoon, when Giselle would stay a little longer and they had something of a pick nick, spreading snacks on a blanket Giselle has embroidered – though they often preferred to spread each other on it, too.

The autumn had its own magical qualities which Diana sensed the more she studied the forest. The air was crisper, and new scents arose around her, scents that mingled with the smells of Giselle, who herself looked like an embodiment of autumn, with her brown hair and tanned skin, and eyes that held all colours of the forest.

Silly, wasn’t it? Years ago, Diana had thought Giselle was like spring. Or the queen of summer. Not long, and Diana would call her the indestructible life hibernating in winter.

She was all that to Diana, who realized this had to be what love did with you.

* * *

**Giselle unbraided Diana’s** hair, brushed it loosely with her fingers, spread it over her back and shoulders. Otherwise, Diana didn’t like wearing her hair open but Giselle she let go on with it, for she loved to take in the sight of it, the yellow tresses falling over Diana’s shoulders and breasts, like her own brown hair fell over hers.

Not that they were bare in that moment; it was a rare sunny autumn day, but surely not warm enough to undress. Yet the idea was there, in their minds, until they’d re-braid each other’s hair.

They laid on a blanket in a clearing, thighs touching, bootless foot tangled for warmth.

Giselle giggled as Diana’s kiss tickled her skin, and with a turn of her head, she took the chance to meet Diana’s lips with her own.

It was moments like this when Diana wished they weren’t outside, but in a room of their own, to get further than kisses and hands slipped under clothes for a few breaths. But –

Giselle took hold of her own as Diana shifted her position. “So you’ll really become a huntress,” Giselle said and grinned. “I have to say, you’re quite sexy in that outfit, with all that equipment.”

Diana quirked an eyebrow. “Any interest in learning to shoot?” she asked playfully. “I could use a hand sometimes.” It wasn’t the first time she asked this. She made a joke of it, again, as Giselle always declined, but deep down, she wished Giselle said yes. She probably made too much if it and yet – her, the huntress, and her girlfriend as her assistant, her hunting partner – they would almost be like Diana’s parents who were like real soulmates, partners in all aspects, reliable parents at one moment and silly lovebirds the next.

Giselle shook her head, slightly, as if it was truly a joke and not a fantasy to her. If so; Giselle didn’t need to enjoy hunting – or butchering, or fighting, or rebellion – to be with Diana.

Diana intended to kiss Giselle’s nose but the hold on her face became firmer.

Giselle’s stare fixed her. “This is it, then?” she asked, suddenly serious. “You’ll stay here? No more trips to the town?”

Diana breathed in sharply –

* * *

**_After a while, she reported_ ** _the events in Trial to her parents. Slowly at first, during a training session, withholding the most decisive matter only she knew about._

_Her parents offered no comments, whether due to their general silence regarding the Scarlet Guard or truly at loss for words, she didn’t know. Either way, she’d had enough of that._

_“Nothing to say?” Diana exclaimed. “Really?” At least that made them frown. “Or do you just know nothing either?”_

_“Diana …” her mother began._

_“You know what I mean,” Diana went on, “you, we’ve done this for years. Lying, stealing, fighting, whatever, and what do we get?!” It felt so good to say it, finally._

_Diana lowered her voice again, straightened her spine. “I was child back then. Eager to trust and dream, unquestioning. But now that I’ve seen it?_

_“They ask us to risk our lives for them, but do they even trust us in return?”_

_Mama gulped. “…what?” The quiet tone was so unusual for her, who had such a striking presence. Now she was almost gliding into the shadows of the trees._

_Diana’s eyes traced her, then slid to her father. “I only want to know what I am used for, if I’m used,” Diana finished._

_Her mother looked at Papa, her arms crossed. Would she give in, after all this time? But as Papa inclined his head, Mama crossed the clearing, squeezing Diana’s shoulder as she passed her on her way to the path home._

_So there was only Papa to glare at. He sighed. “I understand you don’t want to wait any longer,” he conceded. “If you were a proper, oathed member …”_

_“I killed someone,” she confessed._

_Papa stared at her, his face like stone._

_“I didn’t tell the Guard,” she added, the weight of her words crushing her like a breaking wave. For the tears, she didn’t notice when Papa broke his freeze, rushing at her. As he hugged her, soothing her, she told him what happened._

_“I know,” he whispered again and again, but he never elaborated. Just that – understanding._

_Diana didn’t need more, not after a part of her had feared to be despised for it._

_“You were right not to tell them,” he said eventually, and although she didn’t believe he was convinced of that, she accepted the relief he provided – and his promise: To be sworn into the Scarlet Guard very soon._

* * *

**She breathed out,** closing her eyes. She kissed Giselle’s brow and sat up, Giselle following suit.

Diana looked down, Giselle’s hands in hers. She struggled for words, wishing to trust Giselle with her other dreams, with the knowledge of the Guard. Despite her personal doubts, she couldn’t give them up, nor their aims.

“I’m not rooted to this place. Or this job,” she managed eventually. _Nor to this system_. She squeezed their hands, lifting her head. “I belong with the people I love. They’re what matters.” She wanted her gaze to burn with the message underlying her words.

_I love you too._

Did Giselle understand? She smiled weakly, but instead of relief, Diana found a cool gentleness in them, a distant politeness.

“I see,” Giselle said, her lips brushing Diana’s cheek as a goodbye. “Work waits,” she whispered and rose, pinning her hair in a messy know instead of having Diana re-braid it. As if she had not a second to spare.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: As I promised this would be the chapter before the epilogue, I didn’t want to break it in two parts, so this became awfully long. Please stay tuned until the end ^^°

**The frozen ground** cracked under her boots; the crisp wind blew with shrill cries. Diana stepped carefully, lest she lost her balance over the iced-over spots. She didn’t understand why Operative Swan would choose this February evening in coldest winter to come to the northern Lakelands, but Diana would go to Swan’s meeting no matter what.

_Maybe Swan got stuck in the weather here, that’s why._ At least it didn’t rain or snow.

“You okay?” asked Marcus Wolff, walking next to her.

Diana _hmph_ ed, but as he couldn’t notice her gloomy expression beneath the scarf wrapped around her head, she retorted, “I live here.”

Wolff _hmph_ ed back. He returned to his usual silence, yet a few hours before, he’d literally run into her when she’d emerged from the forest in the afternoon.

He’d grabbed her arm. “Come with me,” he’d urged. “There’s a meeting in Aerzen, with Swan. Someone from here should show up.”

“My parents …” Diana had replied, startled by the offer and his insistence.

Wolff had shaken his head. “No time, it’s 15 kilometers and we have to walk.” He’d glanced at her hunting rifle. “Leave that in my transport.”

Apparently, he’d parked his transport at Armina’s Cordes’s farm, to give the impression he was there too, as the farmer had to stay home.

Diana had enough time to ponder on all this, though she was mostly excited about the chance to see Swan again, a real and obviously important member of the Scarlet Guard. She missed the assuring weight of her rifle but agreed with the problems of showing up armed in another place.

Wolff had been right. It would’ve taken too long to search for her parents who she hadn’t seen all day. What was going on here that she didn’t fully grasp? She almost imagined Wolff picked her up specifically, not just because she’d been at hand.

_What if Swan does want to meet with_ me _?_

Another gush of wind hit her face and she pulled her scarf tighter. She breathed in its woollen scent, hoping to catch a whiff of Giselle’s as well. The scarf was – among others of its kind – a present from her girlfriend. But after much use in the cold and damp weather, it had begun to smell rather of Diana, the woods and the hunt – and thus did nothing now to quell Diana’s yearning.

There had been no time to tell Giselle of her trip, either. In fact, in her parents’ absence this morning, Diana had invited Giselle over to spend the evening with her. In her bed.

It was a few weeks after their first sex. That first time had been in the darkest and shortest days of the last year, when absolutely no one wanted to be, or urged another, to go outside, that Giselle had led Diana up to her bedroom while the rest of the household sat downstairs, chatting in front of the fire.

Perhaps it really had been hesitation, a waiting for their own readiness, that had stopped them before, because now they found it so easy to sneak away and make love. Almost once a week they gave in to their fiery desires.

Diana snorted, assuming her face was already bright red from the cold, so her blush would be fully inconspicuous. The day had been grey and cloudy to begin with and the falling of dusk came early and was barely discernible. Nothing but frost would kiss her tonight.

_I hope this meeting will be worth flaking on Giselle and freezing my ass off._

* * *

**Operative Swan awaited** them in the house of the congregation of Aerzen. Looking as formidable as ever, Swan held a speech that did make her sound like a priest. Again, Diana noticed how much Swan resembled the queen.

But no. Although she’d seen only a few images of Queen Cenra Cygnet, there was something off about their resemblance. Beneath the appearance of a veteran soldier, Diana figured, Swan tried to be charming and recruit people for the Scarlet Guard. The queen would never.

_The queen has so much power already, she has no need to win over anyone else. Or just believes she doesn’t._

When Swan finished her speech, a few from the two dozens listening left the house. Diana resisted the urge to follow them – she was past being wooed or excluded. Instead, when Swan retreated into an office, Diana came along with the remaining participants who followed the operative, Wolff among them, and took a seat.

Diana’s eyes toured over the group. She didn’t know how to describe them, but they didn’t look like casual listeners who were only curious – they had experience with meetings like this.

Soon, Swan started a new conversation, a business-like one without the recruitment tone. She reported of several Scarlet Guard successes, staying somewhat vague so the others would have little to betray. Afterwards, she beckoned the group to speak about their hometowns in a similar manner, listening to what they could provide or lacked themselves – which included mentions of threats and abuse from the Silvers and the Reds in their thrall.

It was all very conspirative, and very fascinating. _This is it_ , Diana realized, _this is what I’ve waited for._

When a pause fell over the group, Swan’s gaze shifted to Diana, lingering there for a decisive, challenging moment. It was less an ask and more of a dare, and Diana was ready.

“I’m from Sieverling,” she began, taking the same approach as the other speakers and ignoring her throbbing heart. “Our harvest was poor due to the weather, and we have little reserves after the tithe paid at new year.” She swallowed, glancing around the table. “We can ration and share, and hunt for some meat, but there isn’t much game to be found now, and,” – did she sound like asking for pity and alms? – “we’ll have to make do, but it’s our turn in the greeny corvee this year, and we’ve already made bad experiences with it.” She shrugged. “It might get worse.”

The group watched her intently, Swan most of all. It was also Swan whose eyes stayed on her just a little longer, before she cleared her throat and wrote something down. “We’ll see to it,” she said simply, just how she’d replied to the other reports, although shorter and with a brusque note. 

* * *

**The meeting continued** and ended with Swan wishing them goodbye – conspicuously devoid of conclusions or promises.

_Secretive after all._ Diana rose and moved out slowly. Wolff had vanished on his own, so she remained in the building, waiting for him.

It was Swan who called her after a few minutes. “Ms. Farley,” she repeated, “I’m glad you made it here.”

Diana almost saluted. She inclined her head. “So am I, ma’am,” she replied.

“You’re new to this,” Swan stated, more serious now.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Swan nodded. “Well, it’s good you’re so committed, but I think you don’t understand yet.” Her brown eyes bored into Diana’s, and Diana’s greater height meant nothing in this moment. Swan towered over her as her fingers clasped around Diana’s arm.

“You see, the Guard has to cover its expenses in some way, or we can surrender right now,” Swan said.

Diana nodded, but for a second, Swan’s grip tightened like a vice, her gaze never leaving Diana’s face. “If you ask the Guard for help, we’ll expect compensation in return.” Swan let go.

“I promise to deliver, ma’am,” Diana said, unsettled but obedient.

Swan inclined her head, her expression softening slightly. “I’m sure of it.”

“Is there … another mission for me?”

Swan crossed her arms and waved a hand. Diana didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean – besides “wait more” – then Swan sighed. “There might already be something under way. Anyway, I look forward to work with you further, Ms. Farley.”

They shook hands and Diana grasped that their conversation was about to end. Yet she wouldn’t be left hanging again. “Please wait,” she called in a firm voice.

Swan raised her eyebrows, half surprised, half affirmed.

“Will we meet again?” Diana asked.

“How would I know?” Swan sounded almost amused.

Diana frowned. “If so … I’d like to avoid wasting any more time.”

Swan cackled shortly. “Of course not.”

“I want to pledge myself to the Scarlet Guard,” Diana went on, unperturbed.

Earnestness returned to Swan’s face. It took a second at most, but Diana felt like falling until she heard Swan reply “yes”.

* * *

**_Rise, red as_ ** _the dawn._

So simple. So fitting. So obvious. And yet, the credo filled Diana’s mind like a prayer she’d never needed before. It was done, she was the oathed member “Lamb” of the Scarlet Guard. Though it was rather a start than an achievement, she was elated.

She’d be worthy. She’d bring change. She had to admit she didn’t know how to change what, but that was why she joined the Guard, wasn’t it?

The world had kept her ignorant of what could be, but it was unable to hide its wrongness from her and so many others. It was time to step up, to rise.

Although currently, she stepped the long way home, over the icy ground and through the dark. It was almost midnight, and couldn’t be further from the red dawn.

Wolff stayed the night in Aerzen for some undisclosed reason, but thanks to her hunter’s training, she had no extraordinary problems to find her way home in the night.

She’d almost arrived.

* * *

**At her home** , a lantern shone. From her parents? Or Madeline? Though Diana’s sister was used to their family’s comings and goings in the dark, and would have simply retired without waiting, maybe leaving a candle in her window at most. And the light on the porch was clearly brighter than that.

Diana increased her speed, growing a little wary. But she was hit by surprise nonetheless when she heard _Giselle_ greet her. She rushed the last steps up the porch, into the warm orange light of the lantern and Giselle’s arms.

“What are you doing here?” she muttered. “Why didn’t you go in?”

Giselle hummed instead of answering, shoving away Diana’s scarf and snuggling her face into the crook of Diana’s neck. Diana shuddered when she felt Giselle’s breath on her skin.

“ _I_ should go in?” Giselle murmured teasingly. “Who stayed outside half the night?” She chuckled, one hand on Diana’s back, hugging her tighter, her other hand searching for Diana’s cold fingers. “You’re a literal icicle.”

Diana kissed Giselle’s temple, Giselle’s squeak a proof of the coldness of Diana’s lips. Diana laughed, fumbling with her fingers so she could pull an oversized mitten over their joined hands. “You’re warming me now,” she said softly, and meant it. She hadn’t expected to see Giselle after she’d left for the meeting, and now she wished to bring Giselle up to her room and cuddle with her in her bed.

She moaned as Giselle’s hand found its way under her coat and to her bare back. They began to sway, in a manner that only marginally resembled dancing due to the hour, the temperature, their exhaustion and thick clothes. Yet Diana could easily imagine another dance of them, just as beautiful.

Eventually, Giselle went on her toes and kissed Diana on the lips. “You stood me up,” she breathed, “and I demand compensation.”

_Compensation._

The word crossed through her mind as they kissed again, longer and deeper. It was the second time she heard this word tonight, and it made her consider. Was this the moment to confess? It was merely a question of time before Giselle would ask where she’d been, why she’d broken her promise, and Diana had no explanation ready but the truth.

Giselle’s fingers cradled Diana’s face but her gaze wandered, up and down and aside, in that adorable manner of hers. “I haven’t waited here for long, actually,” Giselle said. “I’ve heard something and I couldn’t wait to tell you.”

Diana lifted her eyebrows. Giselle threw back her head and laughed. “Well, I don’t know _for sure_ , but the news is already making the round, and Ms. Cordes herself said it too, so …” she shrugged and smiled and – in Diana’s eyes – shone brighter than her lantern ever could.

“Lord Isère bought new land and wants tenants to work it,” Giselle went on. “Tenants like my family.”

Diana squeaked and embraced Giselle. She imagined sweeping her of her feet but was too tired for that by now. Excitement and joy for Giselle’s sake rushed through her bloodstream still. “Awesome!” she exclaimed. “Like you wished for.”

Giselle giggled with her, their joined laughter getting louder by the second until they had to stop to catch breath. “Indeed,” Giselle agreed, “indeed.” She quieted, fingertips brushing Diana’s cheek. “I wonder …” she began, yet drifted off.

“What?” Diana muttered as soon as it dawned on her.

“Would you come with me?” Giselle asked, chewing her lips. She sounded hopeful.

But as Diana stayed silent, trying all she could to freeze her face and give nothing away, Giselle frowned. “I … understand you’d want to finish your apprenticeship as a huntress,” she said, not sounding understanding at all. “But I don’t think the new village will have need of a hunter … “

She was still so close, having only slightly loosened their embrace, but it felt like she was flying way, leaving Diana to fall. Diana fought the sensation, lifting her hand to Giselle’s head, cradling it. “We can –”, she urged – but what? What could she offer?

All she could read in Giselle’s face was disappointment. She inched away and grabbed Diana’s arms. “I don’t get it, Diana!” she shouted. “You always said, you wanted away, you wanted change! What is here for you?”

_What_ is _here for me?_

The Scarlet Guard, obviously. But that wasn’t why she hesitated. She could still fight with them from the next village over. It was that Diana knew it wouldn’t end there, the Guard would ask more and more from her because that was the one thing Swan was clear about.

And if Diana loved Giselle and wanted to be with her, she had to be open with her.

She shook her head and smiled weakly. She closed the distance between them and let their foreheads touch. The muscles in her fingers tensed, tightening her hold on Giselle’s face, and Giselle took the hand in hers and moved her head to kiss Diana’s palm. She smiled back and Diana remembered how Giselle had beamed only moments before, when she’d talked about her new future.

_I have to be honest with her…_ , Diana thought, her lips already moving as if preparing for the words to say, looking into Giselle’s expectant eyes.

_… But I also have to protect her._

She closed her eyes. Diana dreamed of the Red Dawn, but Giselle dreamed of a home in safety. And Diana couldn’t take that dream away from her.

Diana pulled away harshly and both their smiles vanished in an instant.

It wasn’t over yet. She could still go back.

She thought of all those times when Giselle had side-eyed her, full of unanswered and unasked questions. Where had Diana been? Why was she away? Why did she learn to fight?

Giselle had never asked, and Diana had preferred to believe she was just moody, like everyone was. But maybe, Giselle really didn’t want to know, nor cared about what Diana did behind her back and wished for deep down.

If they wanted to go on, they’d need to trust one another. And Diana realized she could not grant Giselle that trust.

She stepped back.

Shock spread over Giselle’s face and Diana craved to reach out, to touch her, just one last time. Instead she balled her fists, straightened her back and gave Giselle a hard gaze, engraving that final sight of Giselle into her mind – even though it was a sight of despair.

“I’m sorry,” she said tonelessly, and turned around, opening the door to her house, dashing through and locking it behind her.

She breathed heavily but bit down her tears and sobs as she sank down. She restrained her cries so much it hurt. Not to wake Madeline, she restrained them as she went to her room, as she undressed herself, put on her nightgown and laid down – and only then, pressing her face into the pillow to muffle the sound, she began to cry.

She wore the nightgown Giselle had given her on her birthday. It was a meager replacement for the real girl’s touch.

* * *

**Diana fell in** and out of sleep.

Madeline went over to her at some point, stroking her back and whispering soothing words until Diana was asleep again.

Later, in the early morning, Madeline chased off Papa when he came looking for her. Diana didn’t care about hunting, or telling them about the meeting. She stayed in bed until it was almost noon.

* * *

**It was sunnier** today, although hardly warmer. When she managed to get up, she wrapped herself in a blanket while washing her face. She looked terrible in the mirror and felt close to crying again when she noticed she wore a nightgown from Giselle, held on to a blanket Giselle had embroidered, and used soap she’d made.

So many parts of her Diana had taken for granted and now they were the only things she’d left from her.

“Stop it,” she whispered to her face in the mirror. “Stop.”

She decided to drink some tea – and realized it would be also from Giselle. But it had to stop hurting, didn’t it? Giselle wasn’t dead, and Diana had a mission waiting for her. Life would go on. The Scarlet Guard, they would be her life from now on.

Downstairs, her mother stood at the kitchen window. And she looked even worse than Diana.

The corners of Clara’s mouth twitched. “Good morning.”

“Mama!” Diana cried out, for a second unashamed of sounding like a little girl wanting her mother to comfort her and not at all like a soldier to be.

Not that she gave in to the impulse, even though she smelled Giselle’s tea, prepared by her mother, drifting over the fragrance of the burning fire. She only held on tighter to her mother, breathing heavily as Mama rubbed over her back.

When Mama pulled away, Diana was ready. Keeping her face straight, she said, “I’ve been to a Scarlet Guard meeting last night.”

Mama nodded, gesturing to the table. Diana sat down, thankful for her mother putting bread and a mug with tea in front of her. Sadness and excitement warred in her and either would make her hands shake.

“I’ve given my oath as well,” Diana continued, warming her palms with the mug and meeting her mother’s expectant gaze. Yet further words eluded her. Shouldn’t she have talked about the meeting first, before mentioning her personal success? She stared into the tea until she found her reflection in its surface –

“Hey.” Mama patted her shoulder and Diana looked up. “Congratulations, lamb,” Mama said and Diana settled back into the here and now, though irked that her old pet name and her Guard designation were the same.

Mama cleared her throat. “I knew about the meeting,” she said and took Diana’s hands. “I couldn’t go there” – she paused and blinked – “because I was on a mission myself.”

“Really?”

Mama nodded slowly, then closed her eyes. “Eleven,” she murmured.

“What?”

Mama looked up. “With last night, I’ve killed eleven Silvers by now.”

Diana was aghast. “You … you never said anything,” she stammered.

“I’m becoming the Guard’s favourite killer,” Mama mused. “Or rather their butcher.” She cackled. She turned her face to Diana who was too shocked to speak.

“Last night, it was at a Silver manor,” Mama narrated. “I was to steal coins and grain, then set a fire for distraction.” Her expression darkened. “It didn’t go as planned. There were guests, and then the house blew up.

“I took what I could, and told the same to the dozen of Red workers at the manor. Also that they should flee and hide here.”

“Here? In – “

“Yes. They’ll arrive in a few days.” Mama sighed. “It was _so much_ , Diana. Enough money to support the Guard for months.” She shook her head. “My handler was elated. Said they can’t wait to finally deploy me on a greater scale.”

In the pregnant silence that followed, Diana grasped the implication. “They want you elsewhere?”

Mama nodded, squeezing Diana’s hands. “Papa too. They’re going to press harder for relocation now, as you’ve become a full member as well.”

_So they’ve been asking her and Papa to move for a while._ Diana gulped. “I had no idea.”

Her mother lifted an eyebrow. “Really?”

Diana’s head sank. “No. Yes …” She looked up. “It’s obvious in hindsight, isn’t it?” She gasped as a consequence crossed her mind. “But Madeline?”

Mama shook her head.

“She won’t come with us?” Diana asked and her mother declined.

“To imagine leaving my little girl behind …” Mama sighed deeply. “You know she never had any interest. She wants to stay at my family’s farm. She isn’t like us.” A hint of accusation swung in her voice, but not for Madeline. For herself.

Diana squeezed her mother’s hand. “We can’t make her join,” she said quietly, thinking of someone else as well. “That would be worse.”

Mama pulled loose and leaned back in her chair. She stared at her hands, stretching her fingers that were worn from work. Her fingernails showed dark grey stains. _From the fire last night_ , Diana guessed. _Or from dead Silvers_.

“I thought this place is only good for hiding,” Mama said slowly. “Not for living. But it’s still so hard to leave it behind.”

* * *

**Diana knew. The** coming farewell from her hometown soon left her with a constant ache, a fear of the uncertain future. But this ache was manageable because the future was always unclear, because it also came with a glimmer of hope.

It didn’t stop Diana from sobbing in her pillow the next night. And the next. And the next, as she saw her fate weaving a pattern that denied any option for her and Giselle to be together. She hadn’t anticipated that certainty to arrive so fast, had wished, deep down, to return to her, to give her another chance.

There couldn’t be one, so Diana cried in the dark and every time Madeline would go to comfort her for a while even though Diana didn’t explain why she was sad. It became obvious after a few days anyway, but it was also that Madeline wished to be there for her sister as long as they were together still.

It was enough that her family pampered her, Diana wouldn’t let herself be pitied by the whole village. She had enough to do, preparing their – illegal – leave and instructing the fugitive workers from the manor her mother had burned down. With them arrived resources from the Scarlet Huard, like a reward for her mother’s successful mission. Among the newcomers was a hunter boy Diana took with her to make him familiar with the lands and the forest.

There were times when she enjoyed the idea that Giselle might suspect there was something between her and the boy. At other times, she hated the image. What Giselle really thought, she had no idea. From one day to the next, she and Giselle had stopped talking, as if it was easier that way.

Maybe it was. After all, barely a month had passed when Giselle and her family moved out to Lord Isère’s new settlement; mere days before Giselle’s 17th birthday. Another thing Diana was glad about, for she couldn’t imagine to pretend it was just any other day.

It was painful enough when Giselle embraced her in farewell, like she did with every other youth they grew up with. During her turn, Diana noticed how Giselle’s joyful smile dropped just a little.

Then Diana Farley’s first love, in her best dress and with spring flowers in her hair, climbed onto a cart to leave her past, the village and the girl she’d loved behind, to seek her own path.

* * *

**Madeline sat on** her bed, brushing her yellow hair. It was the June morning before Sieverling’s greeny corvee, Madeline’s first.

_She’ll take my place_ , Diana thought. It was strange to realize since, in several ways, Madeline would really take her place, at least in Sieverling. She’d stay. Diana would leave. Today, it was an order from the Scarlet Guard calling her and her father away to retrieve travel permits and other faked papers for Diana and her parents for when they were moving out of their home village to wherever the Guard wanted them.

_Of course they haven’t told us anything yet._

Neither timing was optimal with the corvee coming, but as the participation lists were old, Madeline, the other kids older than ten now, and the newcomers could fill the ranks for the next few days. Unless someone with the delegated Silvers noticed the new arrivals. Unless someone wondered about those who’d recently left Sieverling for another settlement.

Diana swallowed at the thought that came so close to Giselle. She couldn’t bear it. She rose from the bed, preparing for her own trip but occasionally glancing at her sister.

The early sunlight gleamed and sparkled at her golden necklace, a family heirloom from their mother’s family. Uncle Timo had given it and another to his sister Clara as a parting gift. Diana had declined hers, and passed it on to Madeline.

“So you’ll remember us,” Diana had said, clasping the necklace around her sister’s neck.

Madeline had quirked an eyebrow. “So you’ll remember we’re still here,” she’d retorted.

Diana didn’t know if she could deal with Madeline away from her on top of everything else. She looked at her sister, taking another mental image of her. At thirteen, her sister had gotten big, so tall and long-legged. Her hair, straight and thin unlike Diana’s, had grown so long too. Yet she was still quite slight, delicate and childlike.

_How can we …?_

“Hey,” Madeline stood up, brushing Diana’s arm. “Help me with that?” She pointed to the necklace’s clasp.

“Ah, sure.” Diana reacted slowly, still in a slump. Sometimes she doubted she would be a help to anyone when heartbreak could shatter her like this, asked herself how much her family did only to comfort her. They’d even had a photo taken of the four of them, before they’d part ways.

“Thanks,” said Madeline as Diana placed the necklace in her hand. She looked up to her big sister, with her green eyes, her only facial feature that was more like Mama than Papa.

Madeline put the necklace in a box. “Good luck to you,” she said with a smile and Diana had to smile back. “I confess, I’m kind of excited.” Madeline’s grin widened, her voice going higher in jest. “Who knows, maybe the queen – “

“– will visit us this year?” Diana finished and they both laughed at the old joke. “I hope not.”

* * *

**As Diana and** her father were on their hike to the town were their papers waited in a cache, her thoughts returned to her sister’s old joke. Indeed, she was relieved she wouldn’t meet the Silvers of the greeny corvee, let alone the queen of the Lakelands. Despite her oath, she’d be tempted too much to not act against them in a rush.

_Must be Mama’s killer instinct_ , she considered. But since she wasn’t sure she was ready for another kill, it was probably better this way.

Diana felt better in general, too. She didn’t know where it came from in that moment, but for the first time in months, she didn’t only believe, but also trusted in the cause, and walked lighter for that alone.

_I have to stop pitying myself, for fuck’s sake._

* * *

**In the end** , Madeline had it almost right – a royal of House Cygnet granted Sieverling a visit. But it was the king, not the queen, and he didn’t come to retrieve crops, but to bring a flood.

.

.

.

.

.

* * *

**She had been** wrong to ever feel sorry about the Silver woman she’d killed; wrong to even think Silvers could be “like them.” She’d thought her ignorance about them granted the Silvers the benefit of the doubt, but if she was true to herself, every interaction with them had pointed only in the one direction.

She snorted as she strapped her boots so tight it hurt. She welcomed the pain these days, anything that distracted her from the gaping hole inside of her.

And tightly-strapped boots made it easier to get over the wet ground she was trudging through. She hated it. She hated the walk, the hour, the landscape, herself. When she glimpsed the puddles on the fields through the dark at the end of the night, a fear rose up in her, together with the memory of Sieverling – and what happened to it and everyone she knew.

_He was here too, this place was also flooded, and so is …!_

She pressed her eyes shut. _Calm down._ She chided herself, supressing the ridiculous fear along with anything else she couldn’t allow herself to feel.

She was made of stone and, clad in camouflage, invisible in the late night. The world was shades of grey and as colourless as her heart. Just the new poppy buds, about to bloom today, offered a few bright spots.

The newly-built village looked strange: too clean, almost lifeless – because drudgery simply hadn’t worn it out yet.

She arrived this early so no one would be awake yet. The village looked busy enough, with its animals grazing on pastures and plants growing on the fields. Good to know they seemed to do well.

Fortunately, the settlement wasn’t too large and the house she searched for was located on the corner she came from. She was certain enough it was the right one, with its façade painted with familiar, colourful patterns.

She produced the envelope addressed with Giselle’s name from her pocket and crouched down to shove it under the door. She laid her hands on the door. Then she rested her head against it. She breathed heavily. To know that at least Giselle slept safely, just behind this door …!

She balled her fists and got up. She had no time to linger any longer. 

* * *

**The letter had** been short:

_Dear Giselle,_

_I’m happy you found and arrived at the place you wished for._

_In the end, we’ve left, too._

She’d struggled, laboured over these few words. But she had nothing else she could say. It had been even harder to convince herself to sign it with her name. It would be pointless to end the letter without it, and still she hated how that single signature made her feel a finality in one more than one way.

Looking over her shoulder, she sighed one last time and headed back to their camp where she hadn’t slept in for a minute.

* * *

**She hurried but** _he_ already expected her, looming as serious and soldier-like as ever.

They had that in common now, like they’d begun to share so many traits. None of them were a comfort though, only necessities.

_And yet he took the necklaces and even the photo_ , she remembered. Memories of happiness she’d decided she wouldn’t afford.

“Diana,” he said, the chiding tone unmistakeable. She ignored him. She’d learned, to her surprise, that the Scarlet Guard had made him a _major_ , a rank unattainable to a Red in the Lakelands’ army. He was oh so proud of it and it showed.

“ _Diana_ ,” he repeated, firmer now and she could no longer avoid his gaze. His sight hurt her. The scowl was the only expression he wore on his face nowadays, and it’d rip her open if she didn’t answer in kind. So she glared at him while he simply continued, “you shouldn’t have gone there. You know we have to stay hidden. Di –”

_“Don’t call me that!”_ she snapped. She watched his startlement with an icy satisfaction going down her spine.

Her voice and face were devoid of emotion and she hoped that pleased him in turn. “I’m Operative Farley of the Scarlet Guard,” she announced. “And nothing else.”


End file.
